“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks — no form of government can render us secure.” —James Madison (1778)

Group generalizations are rarely accurate, but in the case of Democrat protagonists, hypocrisy is a virtually unanimous trait.

This past week provided several notable examples of how leftist hypocrites have taken their trade to new lows, as if such duplicity were virtuous.

Last weekend, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was dining with family and friends at the Red Hen, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. After she was recognized by one of the Hen’s gender dysphoric employees, he frantically phoned the restaurant owner to respond to this crisis.

When owner Stephanie Wilkinson arrived, by her account she asked her employees, “Tell me what you want me to do. I can ask her to leave. They said, ‘yes.’” According to Wilkinson, a leftist sympathizer, Sanders works for an “inhumane and unethical” administration, whose “cruelest policies could not stand.”

She asked Sanders to step outside and told her to leave. Sanders went back to the table to gather her belongings, and not wanting to create a disturbance for the rest of the customers, she and her friends walked out. According to Wilkinson, “They offered to pay. I said, ‘No. It’s on the house.’” (Isn’t that special!)

Wilkinson added, “This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.” She then followed Sanders and her party across the street to another restaurant where she heckled her from the sidewalk.

Such brave and bold bigotry!

Sanders confirmed: “I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS, and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.”

The Red Hen is a case study of hypocrisy for two reasons.

First, Wilkinson displays a quote from Martin Luther King in her front window: “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”

So her idea of “love” is to throw people out on the street? There was a time when Democrats refused to serve people because of their skin color. Apparently now they refuse to serve people because of their party color.

Were he alive today, I suspect Dr. King would be deeply discouraged by the intolerance of the Left and saddened by its cynical use of his image and words. And I’m certain that he’d deplore this discrimination by mere association — which is precisely the sort of thing he spent his life peacefully protesting against.

Second, after the Supreme Court recently affirmed the right of a small business owner to refuse to use his artistic talents toward a message that was at odds with his deeply held First Amendment religious beliefs, Democrats howled about the injustice.

“Bake us a cake or else!” they screeched.

But as Ben Shapiro notes, “The [Red Hen and Masterpiece Cakeshop] cases are easily distinguishable in that the restaurant serves the same menu to people of all political persuasions generally, and the baker was being asked to provide a special, tailored service to a special event.”

In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the owner had always served all people, regardless of their affiliations. In the Red Hen case, Sarah Sanders was denied service altogether precisely because of her affiliations.

For his part, Donald Trump chastised Wilkinson: “The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!”

Even Barack Obama’s former chief strategist David Axelrod said he was “amazed and appalled by the number of folks on the left who applauded the expulsion of [Sanders] and her family from a restaurant.”

Given the avalanche of negative press her actions created for the small, historic town of Lexington, Wilkinson was asked to resign her post as executive director of Main Street Lexington, a group tasked with promoting tourism to assist Lexington’s economy. She did resign, but actions have consequences, and Wilkinson’s actions will have a detrimental impact on the whole community.

That is unfortunate. I will always make a stop in Lexington when I traveling through the area, to visit the resting place of Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and would encourage others not to punish the whole community because of Wilkinson’s ugly behavior. While there, I recommendation that grassroots conservatives wearing Trump shirts and MAGA hats flood the Red Hen and ask to use the bathrooms!

So what inspired this absurd confrontation?

Ironically, the Red Hen incident is the result of Democrat leaders scrambling to derail support for Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. I note “ironic” because the Red Hen is undoubtedly riding the wave of economic confidence and growth that Trump administration policies have generated.

Adding to his economic policy success this week, CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey reports that Trump’s economic approval rating has surged six points to 51%, and overall 54% of Americans say the economy is good or excellent — the highest recorded by CNBC since the survey began 10 years ago.

I outlined the Demos’ derailment efforts last week in “Demo Party Leaders Don’t Care About Immigrant Children,” an assessment of their viral diversionary immigration charade thrust upon the nation’s conscience.

They and their Leftmedia machine unleashed a massive social media campaign of lies and deceptions to create a firestorm, using viral images of children in cages, claiming they were “ripped from the arms of their parents by Donald Trump” and comparing Trump to Hitler. (The photos were taken in 2014 when Obama was setting immigration policy.)

Demos then followed up with loads of other spurious viral images of crying children (one of them featured on a Time magazine cover), and even a fake Facebook fundraiser.

They calculated that the emotional impact of these photos would overrule any concern for authenticity, banking on the fact that many of their constituents are emotionally incontinent dupes and are unable to exercise discretion regarding this immigration Demo-goguery.

It appears that the Demos have found the hatefest that will elevate the immigration issue before the midterm elections and undermine Republican efforts to pass any meaningful immigration reform legislation.

But their immigration farce is also an abject example of hypocrisy (which I explain at the end of this column).

Seizing the “babies ripped from mothers’ arms by Trump” momentum, race-bait agitator Maxine Waters (D-CA) called for mob attacks on Trump administration officials who dare show their faces in public.

According to Waters, “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. If you see anybody from that [administration] in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd! And you push back on them! Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere! … Already you have [Trump people] that are being booed out of restaurants. We have protesters taking up at their house. … God is on our side!”

That was a reference to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen being harassed out of a restaurant by socialists who spotted her there — before Sanders was jack-booted from the Red Hen. Members of the #Resistance then showed up at Nielsen’s home to harass her and her family.

Trump responded to Waters: “The face of the Democrats is now Maxine Waters who, together with Nancy Pelosi, have established a fine leadership team. The Left is trying to bully and buy their way back into power. Not on my watch. I will always stand up for you. … Waters has just called for harm to supporters… Be careful what you wish for Max!”

Rarely a voice of reason, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) knew exactly where Trump was going with his “be careful Max” warning and that Waters’s incitement was going to lead to violence. Schumer issued this rebuke: “I strongly disagree with those who advocate harassing folks if they don’t agree with you. … No one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American.”

But Waters’s hateful rhetoric is already drawing out the unhinged fringe.

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As I note in this column, Democrats have unleashed a massive campaign of lies and deceptions in order to ensure victory in the upcoming midterm elections — especially to ensure that, after Anthony Kennedy’s replacement, Donald Trump will have no more opportunity to nominate conservative jurists after the next Congress is seated.

We are on the frontlines of the battle to undo the Democrats’ dezinformatsiya campaigns and The Patriot Post is the most cost-effective means of dislodging the Leftmedia’s stranglehold on public opinion. Please support our fight to defend Liberty by supporting The Patriot Fund today.

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Yesterday, a Democrat activist was arrested for threatening to kill the children of Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL). And the frequency of death threats against Republican members of Congress is growing.

This is the same hate-mongering that resulted in the armed assault on Republicans last year, when a Bernie Sanders supporter shot House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and four others.

Responding to the growing chorus of hate rhetoric on the Left, Scalise said, “We have a responsibility to make sure that, as we’re discussing our disagreements, we’re not trying to incite others to violence. … Nobody should be inciting harassment or violence of any sort just because we disagree with each other on issues. We’ve got a great battlefield of ideas where we can actually discuss our disagreements publicly, but we’ve got to do it in a civil way where we respect the differences of opinion.”

But Democratic Black Caucus chairman Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) doubled down by defending Waters, declaring, “She encouraged Americans to exercise their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.” He added, “Where is the national conversation on civility in these moments?”

Good question.

Adolescent protesters (of all ages) are now taking up residence outside key administration officials’ homes, threatening the children of DHS employees, leaving burned and beheaded animal carcasses on their doorsteps, and exposing the names and addresses of immigration agents so they can be targeted.

These agitators are the effluent of last year’s antifa movement of self-proclaimed anti-fascists who are in fact an extreme manifestation of fascism.

Of course, leftist cultural icons are also churning the hate against anyone who would dare not support open borders.

“This is pure and simple racism — that’s all this is,” declared Hollywood gatekeeper Rob Reiner this week. “[Trump is] hoping that the people who support him will be ginned up and running to the polls to make sure that brown people don’t come into America. … It’s a fascist playbook. … Those people who are supporting what he’s doing [on the border] are racists, period.” (His wife compared Trump to Hitler.)

What’s gotten very little attention amid all the immigration Demo-drama and their support of open borders is the fact that Mexico, now one of the most violent nations in the world, is exporting that violence across our border into the heartland of America – encouraged to do so in mass by Mexico’s rising communist regime.

On Sunday, Mexico will elect its next president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (nicknamed AMLO), who’s a follower of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chávez. I encourage you to read more about AMLO’s socialist vision and then consider his call for mass infiltration across our southern border as an assault on the U.S. economy.

According to Dick Morris, former political adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton: “AMLO is as radical as they come. He is a true Fidelista or, in more modern vernacular, a Chavista (after Hugo Chávez of Venezuela) or a Sandinista (after Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua). National Review called AMLO a ‘Chávez wannabe.’ He described Fidel Castro as ‘a giant,’ who ‘knew how to steer his people and achieve authentic, true independence.’ He is a dedicated socialist who we can count on being inveterately hostile to the United States in general and Donald Trump in particular. We have never faced so clear a danger on our border as we will after July 1. It is entirely too late to avoid it. AMLO is certain to win. And, then, la deluge!”

Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said this week, “We stop 10 terrorists every day from getting into this country.” Given the volume of illegal immigrants who are not apprehended, how many are getting into the country every day?

This is precisely why President Trump has signaled his intent to shut down the pipeline of illegal immigrants in order to avoid the flood.

“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” declared Trump last weekend. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. … Hiring many thousands of judges, and going through a long and complicated legal process, is not the way to go — will always be dysfunctional. People must simply be stopped at the Border and told they cannot come into the U.S. illegally. If this is done, illegal immigration will be stopped in its tracks — and at very little, by comparison, cost. This is the only real answer — and we must continue to BUILD THE WALL!”

Of course, leftists who constantly trample Rule of Law in favor of their own rule were outraged by Trump’s proposal, even claiming that he was circumventing due process of law.

Actually, no.

Trump has the full legal authority to turn immigrants back under 8 U.S.C. §1182. And after Sunday’s elections in Mexico, exercising that authority will be imperative. The latest Supreme Court decision in favor of Trump’s travel ban cited the authority of 8 U.S.C. §1182, which affirms:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Finally, as I promised above, allow me to point out the ultimate Democrat hypocrisy regarding immigration.

The immigrants flooding across our southern border, risking their lives and those of their children to get here, are fleeing statist regimes in their Central American countries, along with the corruption and poverty generated by such regimes.

The tragic hypocritical irony is that Socialist Democrat Party protagonists, who are riding a tidal wave of support created by their latest immigration charade, are relentlessly promoting the same statist policies that those immigrants are trying to escape.

If hypocrisy were a virtue, Democrats would be the most virtuous among us.

At the dawn of our republic, James Madison wrote, “Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.” To that end, the Democrats have made great strides in recent years undermining the foundation of our Republic.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776