As we at CFIF often highlight, strong intellectual property (IP) rights - including patent rights -…
CFIF on X CFIF on YouTube
Senate Must Support Strong Patent Rights, Not Erode Them

As we at CFIF often highlight, strong intellectual property (IP) rights - including patent rights - constitute a core element of "American Exceptionalism" and explain how we became the most inventive, prosperous, technologically advanced nation in human history.  Our Founding Fathers considered IP so important that they explicitly protected it in the text of Article I of the United States Constitution.

Strong patent rights also explain how the U.S. accounts for an incredible two-thirds of all new lifesaving drugs introduced worldwide.

Elected officials must therefore work to protect strong IP and patent rights, not undermine them.   Unfortunately, several anti-patent bills currently before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee this week threaten to do exactly…[more]

April 02, 2025 • 08:29 PM

Liberty Update

CFIFs latest news, commentary and alerts delivered to your inbox.
Polls Showing Support For Israel Hide Some Ugly Truths Print
By David Harsanyi
Friday, October 27 2023
Also according to the Harvard poll, a majority of 18- to 24-year-olds believe the killing of more than 1,200 Israeli and American civilians was justified. Nearly half of those 25 to 35 believe it was justified.

According to a new Harvard/Harris poll, only the police and military are more respected than Israel. It's heartening that Americans overwhelmingly support civilization over the Islamofascists of Gaza and Iran.

Then again, "Palestinian Authority" gets 17% support, and Hamas has a 14% positive rating  which is to say 14% of your neighbors have taken the side of a medieval religious cult that's vicious enough to cut Jewish babies out of mothers before beheading them. If 14% of Americans supported ISIS or al Qaeda or the Nazi Party, we would probably be concerned.

Anyway, those numbers seem far too small to me. I think there's a good reason why. For one thing, many of those who claim to be "supporters" of the Jewish state are not. The Barack Obama types, who do the perfunctory throat-clearing about Israel's right to exist before going into the usual reasons it should not. This faction  let's be generous and call them "both-siders"  is a growing concern in the Democratic Party and on the fringes of the Right.

According to the Harvard poll crosstabs, 36% of "liberals" of all ages agreed that the Hamas attack on civilians was justified, and 15% of "conservatives." While antisemitism isn't the exclusive domain of left or right, full-blown Hamas apologists are now deeply embedded in left-wing institutions such as universities, major newspapers, cable news, progressive politics, think tanks and the State Department. They have the kind of disproportionate reach and institutional respect that cosplaying Nazis standing in front of Disney can only dream about.

Also according to the Harvard poll, a majority of 18- to 24-year-olds believe the killing of more than 1,200 Israeli and American civilians was justified. Nearly half of those 25 to 35 believe it was justified. That percentage might be a bit lower than what you find in The New York Times newsroom; nevertheless, it is only going to get worse.

How many young people working as engineers or carpenters or starting a new business or at home tending to a new family support Hamas? Very few, one imagines. What about the literature majors or those pursuing international relations degrees or Ph.D.s in one of the social pseudosciences? There is little hope for those who attend hermetically sealed ideological laboratories of higher "learning," where identitarianism, intersectionality and other iterations of Marxism  most contingent on some form of antisemitism  are taught.

These institutions are run by cowardly administrators who only stand up for free speech when defending terror apologists. They will continue to create credentialed moral nitwits. These are not often places for young people to learn critical thinking skills. But they are places that produce ideologues who'll be getting those editorial jobs and professorships and teachers union presidencies and law clerkships and security clearance jobs at the Pentagon.

Who else makes up this minority? We're not supposed to talk about it, but it's clear. According to a Cygnal poll (the outfit gets an "A" rating from FiveThirtyEight), a majority of American Muslims agree that Hamas was "justified" in its attack on Israel as well.

Though it is indisputable that antisemitism is deeply ingrained in certain Muslim communities, to say so will likely get you smeared as "Islamophobic"  always a big topic of conversation in Washington when Jews are being murdered.

But look to Europe, where crimes against Jews have skyrocketed in places with high levels of immigration from the Middle East, to understand the potential problem. When Pew polled the Muslim world, it found nearly universal antipathy toward Jews. Not only in places like Jordan and Egypt, where governments have spent decades ginning up Jew-hatred to distract from their own failing, but also in Muslim-majority nations like Indonesia, where there are around 20 Jews and the Israeli border sits thousands of miles away. Antisemites like Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib did not appear from the ether. They represent communities in Michigan and Minnesota.

There were dozens of Charlottesville-type marches in the United States last week, with chants of genocide ringing in the air. They were attended largely by Muslim protesters, along with the hard Left (including a number of self-hating Jews.) Though Jews are by far the most targeted religious minority in the United States, we have yet to have a big national conversation about the problem. No one in major media dares even bring it up.  


David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books -- the most recent, "Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent." 

COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM

Notable Quote   
 
"Gone are rules banning a wide swath of gas stoves. Gone are the strict water standards governing dishwashers and shower heads. And gone is the government-wide effort to force electrification of the economy through appliance regulations. It is all part of a historic action the Trump administration announced Monday, reversing dozens of energy regulations, saving consumers more than $11 billion, and…[more]
 
 
— Thomas Catenacci, Washington Free Beacon
 
Liberty Poll   

Given the current rapidly moving world economic and security environment, do you believe that the Federal Reserve is making a huge mistake by not lowering interest rates immediately, before the country falls into recession or worse?