Townhall Review – October 19, 2019

Don Proft and co-anchor Amy Jacobson talk with Seth Frantzman, Middle East analyst at The Jerusalem Post, about President Trump’s decision to pull troops from Syria.

Sam Malone talks with Robert Maginnis for his analysis of the situation with Turkey and Syria.

Hugh Hewitt and Alex Conant of Firehouse Strategies talk about the Democrat Presidential debate and where the candidates rank.

Sebastian Gorka talks with James O’Keefe of Project Veritas about evidence that the elite media has something of a vendetta against President Trump.

Albert Mohler gives his analysis of a speech on religious liberty given by U.S. Attorney General William Barr at Notre Dame Law School.

Dennis Prager and Kimberly Strassel, Wall Street Journal, talk about her book, “Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America.”

Bob Frantz talks with Dr. Everett Piper, former President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, about individual responsibility and getting your own act together before criticizing someone else.

CNN’s recent Equality Town Hall was an earthquake—morally, politically, and culturally.

In case you missed it: When Beto O’Rourke was asked if he would strip the tax exemption from religious organizations that hold what he considers to be the wrong view of marriage, he responded with an unequivocal and unconditional “yes.”

Shortly after that, Beto O’Rourke then tweeted his own statement, making clear he was proud of it.

Some on the left were extremely troubled, not because they disagreed with him, but because he let the cat out of the bag.

Michael McGough, senior editorial writer for The Los Angeles Times, ran a piece with the headline, “Beto O’Rourke’s ‘church tax’ idea plays into conservative paranoia about same-sex marriage.”

Conservative paranoia?

Conservative evangelicals are now called “paranoid” for listening to the words actually spoken by those who are running for president, and being concerned about those words.

That’s not paranoia.

That’s called reality.

Mike Gallagher plays some of the highlights, if there is such a thing, from the “garbage” Democrat debate on Tuesday.

An important new study from the American Medical Association makes the point that children hurt their school performance not by the total hours they spend on “screen time” but by the kind of screens they choose to watch.

In the journal Jama Pediatrics, the authors summarize 58 studies published in recent years. Their conclusions show that time spent watching TV or playing video games is just as destructive as experts have long maintained—particularly damaging children’s achievement during their teenage years.

But other sorts of screen time—like social media on smart phones, or surfing the web—prove far less destructive because they’re less passive, more communicative.

In an era when parents sometimes spend thousands on tutors to boost a child’s academic prospects, they could produce better results by strictly limiting time gawking at the tube, or lost in the fantasy world of video games.

Dan Proft, sitting in for Dennis Prager, talks with historian Victor Davis Hanson, about the ongoing impeachment talks.

On CNN last week there was a deeply disturbing exchange between Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke and Don Lemon, who asked:

“Do you think religious institutions—like colleges, churches, charities—should they lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage?”

“Yes. There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break, for anyone, any institution, any organization in America that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us.”

Just to be clear, this not about whether donors should be allowed to deduct contributions or not. This is an open call for the state to tax the church, to seize the assets of the church—and synagogue and mosque—and not of churches in general, but targeted at the ones who retain the orthodox positions of their respective faiths.

It’s an argument for the state suppression of religion.

Dennis Prager invites Sebastian Gorka, to talk about his new book, The War for America’s Soul: Donald Trump, the Left’s Assault on America, and How We Take Back Our Country.