The ‘Anti-Hate’ Group That Is a Hate Group

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by Karl Zinsmeister

The masterminds behind the Southern Poverty Law Center aren’t eliminating hate. They are fueling it.

Shutting down people you don’t agree with is about as un-American as you can get. Rigorous debate, honest discussion, open exchange of ideas—that’s the American way. But free thinking and speech are threatened today by a group with a sweet-sounding name that conceals a nefarious purpose. This group is called the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC.

Originally founded as a civil-rights law firm in 1971, the SPLC reinvented itself in the mid-‘80s as a political attack group. Every year now it produces a new list of people and charities it claims are “extremists” and “haters.” Aided by glowing coverage from the establishment media, the SPLC’s hate list has become a weapon for taking individuals and groups they disagree with and tarring them with ugly associations.

The SPLC employs a two-pronged strategy: First, find a handful of crazies with barely any followers, no address, and no staff, and blow them up into a dangerous movement— proof that there are neo-Nazis lurking everywhere. On their notorious “Hate Map,” the SPLC lists 917 separate hate groups in the U.S.! No one has even heard of more than a handful of them. The second strategy of the SPLC is to undermine legitimate political voices that they oppose by associating them with extremists like the KKK.

Take the charity known as the Alliance Defending Freedom. The SPLC lists them as a “hate group.” Is that fair? Well, the ADF has a network of 3,000 attorneys from all across the U.S. who’ve donated more than a million volunteer hours in defense of religious liberty. They’ve had a role in 49 victories at the U.S. Supreme Court. Putting the Alliance Defending Freedom on a list with 130 Ku Klux Klan chapters is not only wrong, it’s malicious.

According to the SPLC, one of the most influential social scientists in the U.S.— Charles Murray—is a, quote, “white nationalist.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, perhaps the most eloquent spokesperson for the rights of Muslim women, is, to the SPLC, a “toxic… anti-Muslim extremist.”

Scores of other individuals and charities active in mainstream conservative or religious causes have likewise been branded by the Southern Poverty Law Center as threats to society. Mind you, it is entirely fair to disagree with any of those folks. But it is utterly unfair to call them haters or extremists. The largest category listed by the SPLC as extremists—with 623 entries—covers groups like the Tea Party organizations that are wary of centralized government. Last time we checked, favoring smaller government was a mainstream and perfectly honorable American tradition.

What is not honorable is the course prescribed by a leader of the SPLC, Mark Potok, who was caught on video proclaiming the organization’s true intentions. He told a group of supporters, quote, “the press will describe us as ‘monitoring hate groups’…. I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.” Portraying someone with political views different from your own as a public menace is bullying. And it’s a dangerous game. Instead of reducing hate and violence, the SPLC’s name-calling directly incites it.

In March 2017, Charles Murray was trying to discuss his acclaimed book Coming Apart at Middlebury College when he was violently attacked by protesters inflamed by the SPLC’s labeling of him as a racist. A professor escorting Murray ended up in the hospital. In 2012, a gunman attempted mass murder at the Family Research Council, and failed only because the first man he shot managed to disarm him. The attacker told the police he acted because the SPLC had listed the Family Research Council as a hate group. It’s a vicious irony: while promoting itself as a monitor of “hate groups,” the SPLC has, in practice, become a fomenter of hate.

Yet the group rolls on, bigger than ever. What keeps them going? For one thing, the establishment media constantly quote them. Scare stories about right-wing storm-troopers are a sure way to attract eyeballs, and fit nicely with the media’s own preconceptions of the “dangerous reactionaries” lurking out there in middle America.

Second, alarmism is a great fundraising technique. Convincing people there are fascists everywhere has turned the SPLC into a cash machine. Last year, the group hustled $50 million dollars out of frightened liberal donors, adding to the $368 million dollars of assets they were already sitting on.

So, the next time you see the Southern Poverty Law Center quoted in the news, just remember: the masterminds behind the SPLC aren’t eliminating hate. They are fueling it.

Karl Zinsmeister is an author, journalist, and served in the West Wing as President George W. Bush’s chief domestic policy adviser. The above transcript was reprinted from Prager University.

America Wants Legal Immigrants

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by Reihan Salam

By prioritizing immigrants with strong skills, we’d make the safety net much easier to sustain for those with low skills.

I am the proud son of immigrants from Bangladesh. I was raised in New York City, which has benefited enormously from the energy and ambition of the millions of people born abroad who’ve chosen to make it their home. But I also believe that America’s immigration system needs to work for America, and right now, that is simply not the case.

We need a new immigration system. So what should it be? We’re often presented with two stark choices: Severe restrictions or open borders. I think there’s a better way. But before I offer a solution, let’s look at the usual suspects. The case for open borders is, on the surface, pretty attractive. Tens of millions of people around the world would be grateful to come to America for the chance to live in peace and earn a decent living. The vast majority of them mean us no harm.

Why not give them a chance to share in the blessings of liberty? The simple answer is that our country is more than just a marketplace. We’re a democracy based on a social contract. Americans pay taxes so that, among other things, the poorest, most unlucky among us can still lead decent and dignified lives. If you can’t work, you might be eligible for unemployment benefits or disability. If you do work but your paycheck doesn’t go far enough for you to afford medical care or food for your kids, we have a safety net designed to help you stay afloat.

Liberals and conservatives disagree on how extensive this safety net ought to be, but they all agree it needs to be there. The question is, how we far are willing to stretch it?

A century ago, immigrants who found they couldn’t make it in America had little choice but to go back home. That is no longer the case. These days, immigrants who can’t earn enough to support their families have access to many government benefits. That doesn’t make them bad people. In an age of offshoring and automation, wages for menial jobs don’t go very far. If we only admitted a modest number of low-skill immigrants—say, as political refugees—we could easily handle it. But over the past forty years, we have allowed millions of low-skill immigrants into the country, both legally and illegally. While highly-educated immigrants pay far more in taxes than they consume in benefits, the opposite is true of immigrants with less than a high school diploma

Immigrant engineers working for Google, Amazon and Apple do just fine without government help. The immigrant janitors and busboys who serve them struggle to afford housing and to give their kids a decent start in life. Without government aid, many would go hungry. If we were to open our borders, the number of low-skilled immigrants would skyrocket, and so too would the cost of meeting their needs. Ironically, this would only exacerbate the wealth disparity that so animates the open borders crowd.

Maybe the rich could wall themselves off in gated communities. But the growing ranks of the poor and even the middle class would have to deal with ever more strained social services. That could provoke resentment strong enough to set off real class warfare.

If open borders are a bad idea, so too is severely restricting immigration. For one, immigration has always been part of the American story. And it continues to be an essential source of talent, from Silicon Valley to medicine to pro sports. Why shut ourselves off from the dynamism and energy that immigrants can bring?

Thankfully, there isa way to fix this problem. We can modernize the system to give priority to those who have strong skills and job offers—people, in other words, who will pay more in taxes than they need in benefits. Today, we admit about two-thirds of immigrants on the basis of family ties and only 15 percent on the basis of skills. We need a course correction. We should limit family immigration to immediate family members—such as spouses and minor children—while greatly expanding the number of skills-based visas.

A skills-based points system would be a huge boon for people around the world looking to live the American Dream. It would give them a predictable, step-by-step guide for how to better their chances at a green card. Just as importantly, by prioritizing immigrants with strong skills, we’d make the safety net much easier to sustain for those with low skills—whom we’d still admit, albeit at a more modest level.

Let’s announce to the world that if you’re ambitious, if you have skills we prize, the golden door is open. If you can support yourself and your family, and add to our economy, we want you. If we aspire to an immigration system that works, this the most realistic—and idealistic—choice.

Reihan Salam is the executive editor of National Review. The above transcript was reprinted from Prager University.

The Charlottesville Lie

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by Steve Cortes

President Trump never called neo-Nazis “very fine people.” Tragically, the media spread a malicious lie that has poisoned our national dialogue ever since.

Politicians lie. We all know that. That is not an indictment of all politicians—it’s simply part of the game. It’s our job, as informed citizens, to figure out the truth. And that’s where journalists and the media come in. They are supposed to help us ferret out fact from fiction. So when they get a fact wrong, that’s bad. When they get a fact wrong, know it’s wrong, and don’t correct it, that’s worse. That’s not getting a fact wrong; that’s a lie. And that’s journalistic malfeasance.

The best (or maybe worst) example of this followed a presidential press conference at Trump Tower on Tuesday, August 15, 2017. You remember what happened that previous weekend: A group of white supremacists held a “white pride” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The ostensible reason was to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

An Antifa group showed up to counter-protest. The mayor and the police were totally unprepared to deal with the violence that ensued. Tragically, a young woman, Heather Heyer, was run over and killed by a neo-Nazi.

The press conference itself was raucous. The media was antagonistic. The president was combative. Out of it all, one phrase eclipsed the thousands of words exchanged: The media reported that President Trump described neo-Nazis as “very fine people.” Only, he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t even hint at it. Just the opposite: he condemned the neo-Nazis in no uncertain terms. So then, who were the “fine people” he mentioned? The answer: He was referring to another group of Charlottesville demonstrators who came out that weekend—protestors who wanted the Robert E. Lee statue removed and protestors who wanted to keep the statue and restore the park’s original name.

This is what President Trump said about those peaceful protestors: “You also had some very fine people on both sides. . . . You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of—to them—a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.” A few moments later, in case there would be any misunderstanding, he makes his meaning even more explicit. “…I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists. They should be condemned totally.”

Lest you have any doubts that good people were in Charlottesville to protest the removal of the

Robert E Lee statue, the New York Times confirmed it in a story they published the next day, August 16. “’Good people can go to Charlottesville,’ said Michelle Piercy, a night shift worker at a Wichita, Kansas retirement home, who drove all night with a conservative group that opposed the planned removal of a statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee. After listening to Mr. Trump on Tuesday, she said it was as if he had channeled her and her friends… who had no interest in standing with Nazis or white supremacists…”

There’s another simple test that we can employ to prove that the president was not referring to the neo-Nazis as “fine people.” It’s so obvious, it’s painful to mention: The president’s daughter and son-in-law are Orthodox Jews. His grandchildren are Jewish. And if that is still not enough to convince you, how about this: Does anyone believe that Donald Trump thinks there are “good” Antifa, the leftist thugs who were counter-protesting the neo-Nazi thugs? After all, if those two groups were the only ones involved, and there were “fine people on both sides,” that means the president believed that there were fine Antifa people.

Even MSNBC should have found that hard to swallow.

Again, the “very fine people on both sides” President Trump described at the press conference were the people who wanted to remove the Robert E. Lee statue and the people who wanted to keep it. Both of these groups were non-violent protesters—fine people with very different ideological views. The scandal of Charlottesville is not what President Trump said about neo-Nazis. It’s what the media said President Trump said about neo-Nazis. It’s a scandal because news reporting is supposed to be about gathering facts, not promoting an agenda.

In Charlottesville, they got it exactly backwards. We have been living with the consequences ever since. Plainly put: ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the others spread a malicious lie that has poisoned our national dialogue. They should apologize to the American people for what they have done.

Don’t hold your breath. Actually, I have a better idea. Let out a big sigh of relief. Because now you know the truth.

Steve Cortes is a CNN political commentator and columnist for Real Clear Politics. The above transcript was reprinted from PragerU.