20-Year-Old Friends Become Youngest Black Republicans Elected in Connecticut

Big Government

A pair of 20-year-old friends may have just become the youngest black Republicans ever elected to public office in Connecticut, according to reports.

"Ed Ford Jr. and Tyrell Brown, a pair of young black men elected to office in Middletown, Connecticut, have been friends since middle school. They share many things but most especially an interest in politics, WTNH channel 8 reported.

"Speaking of his friend, Mr. Ford told WTNH, “I met him playing two-hand touch football.”

"Now, these two college juniors may have become the youngest black Republicans ever to be elected to a public office in the liberal state of Connecticut. On Election Day, Ford won a seat on the Middletown school board, and Brown was elected to the Middletown Planning and Zoning Commission.

"Both young men admitted that many of their fellow millennials look suspiciously at them for being Republicans. They also note that they are serious about their politics.

“ 'If you have the will to do it, if you have the passion to do it, go do it now,” Ford told reporters of the pair’s go-getter attitude.

"Ford, a psychology major at Central Connecticut State University, and Brown, a business major at Southern Connecticut State University, hope to bring their conservative ideas to their newly won seats.

"The newly minted representatives of Middletown’s voters will be sworn in on November 14 at the Middletown City Hall." . . .

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin says most in middle class will get a break under Republican tax reform proposal . . .

. . . but stops short of promising it to all

UK Daily Mail  . . . "Mnuchin pointed out Sunday that the complexity of the tax code makes predicting every scenario impossible, adding that Republicans in the House and Senate want to simplify the code with proposed legislation. 

 " 'For most people - and, again, it may not be 100 percent, but by far the majority - both the House and Senate version provide middle-income tax relief,' Mnuchin said on CNN.

" 'What's so complicated in our tax situation today is that everybody has a different situation, takes advantage of different parts of the code, it's very complicated. So by simplifying the code, we're putting everybody on a level playing field,' he said." . . . Read more 

Atheism and the Texas Church Shooter

Selwyn Duke  “ 'If God does not exist, everything is permitted,” wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov.  Mentioning this in association with Devin Patrick Kelley, the militant atheist who last Sunday perpetrated the worst church shooting in U.S.  history, is bound to raises hackles.  Of course, few atheists will descend into committing murder; in fact, I’ve known some I’d call “good people.” Moreover, note that I myself once not only didn’t believe in God, but like Kelley thought religious people were “stupid.” Yet is it possible a straight line can be drawn between atheism (the belief) and increasing crime and immorality? Ideas do have consequences, after all." . . . 
. . . 

. . . "This may take a dark form or just that of the atheistic but generally good-hearted young man I once knew who responded, when I mentioned that something he was contemplating was wrong, “But it’s not wrong for me.” The point, however, is that atheism’s implied moral nihilism can justify anything.  Rape? Kill? Steal? Why not? Who’s to say it’s wrong? This brings us to one last matter. 

"When someone points out that atheistic Marxist governments have killed 65 to 110 million people, atheists will often retort, “But atheism doesn’t prescribe that!” They’re correct.  Atheism doesn’t prescribe any behavior.

"It also doesn’t proscribe any behavior.

"And that’s the problem.  Silence on moral matters would be fine if man by nature were angelic.  But by nature, he’s barbaric — and he remains so unless some civilizing agency enters the equation.  Atheism’s mistake is one of omission. "

"A Republic, if You Can Keep It"

An argument for the Electoral College and against "popular vote"

John F. McManus  . . . "The Founding Fathers supported the view that (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) "Men ... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." They recognized that such rights should not be violated by an unrestrained majority any more than they should be violated by an unrestrained king or monarch. In fact, they recognized that majority rule would quickly degenerate into mobocracy and then into tyranny. They had studied the history of both the Greek democracies and the Roman republic. They had a clear understanding of the relative freedom and stability that had characterized the latter, and of the strife and turmoil — quickly followed by despotism — that had characterized the former. In drafting the Constitution, they created a government of law and not of men, a republic and not a democracy.

"But don't take our word for it! Consider the words of the Founding Fathers themselves, who — one after another — condemned democracy.

"• Virginia's Edmund Randolph participated in the 1787 convention. Demonstrating a clear grasp of democracy's inherent dangers, he reminded his colleagues during the early weeks of the Constitutional Convention that the purpose for which they had gathered was "to provide a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and trials of democracy...."

"• John Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, championed the new Constitution in his state precisely because it would not create a democracy. "Democracy never lasts long," he noted. "It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself." He insisted, "There was never a democracy that 'did not commit suicide.'"

. . .  Full article here.