If you think I do not know what I am stating, I worked for a Mayor of the fourth largest city in the U.S. in the turbulent 1970s and we did not have riots, looting or unlawful protests. This City did not have the incidents other major cities had when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, anti-war or civil rights demonstrations, riots and looting. We hosted major events like the Bicentennial, the 200 year anniversary of the birth of our country, Pope John Paul II's visit, major sporting events and did not have any issues as city leadership was prepared. We even dealt with an anti-establishment back to nature group called MOVE and tried a peaceful solution, but it did not work and after all negotiations, it fell apart. The Mayor was left with no choice and took them out. I can attest to this first hand, as I was involved in the negotiations. We knew who the organizers and agitators were and arrested them and tried and convicted them for murder.

These measures need to be put in place again. No more standing by and to let the mob take over a city and its communities that will suffer after this mob leaves. Strong leadership has to take measures and if they are called names for allowing law enforcement to take strong measures it is what they are elected to do. Leaders lead and are not there to win a popularity contest.

One last point, Mayor Rizzo died almost 30 years ago yet the mob in Philadelphia tried to destroy the ten-foot statue of him in front of City Hall. They burned the base of the statue and when two older women tried to stop it they were assaulted but no arrests were made as police just stood by. If he was still the Mayor this would not have happened and he would have supported his law enforcement and put in place the steps listed above. We need leaders to protect its citizens, property and law enforcement. The media is also to blame for glorifying the protestors and rioters.

In the wake of peaceful demonstrations, arson, looting, and property destruction, and in the aftermath of the tragic death of an African American man in police custody, many American celebrities -- actors, artists, and athletes -- have called for the defunding of the police.

Megan Rapinoe, the outspoken soccer player, is a good example, but there are many others.

We understand where she and others are coming from, but just signing a public letter is a gesture of superficial consequence. Far more powerful would be for these celebrities to "take the pledge." This would be a strong individual and collective statement of personal responsibility. It would be more than public relations for the "woke", but a declaration of fundamental change in society that they desire and are uniquely qualified to model for the rest of us.

So here is the pledge that each one of the caring and intelligent luminaries must sign. It should have tremendous impact on those who read it.

We, the undersigned, believe that the United States of America, and all of its history, jurisdictions and institutions, are and were from the beginning, systemically racist.

We believe that the police present a fundamental danger to all people of color.

Therefore, it is our heartfelt and earnest belief that the police forces throughout the nation should be defunded and abolished.

We pledge that we will not, for the duration of our lifetimes, ever call the police for any matter whatsoever. We would never want such despicable people in our lives' orbits.

Nor will we employ private security of any kind, by ourselves or through our employers, as such purveyors of violence and discrimination are not necessary in the world as we see it.

Our objection to the Second Amendment of the Constitution is well known, and therefore its provisions will not be exercised by ourselves, our families, and our employees and associates.

Therefore, we the undersigned do hereby collectively agree to publicly proclaim that we will henceforth live without any so-called police "protection."

We further demand that all law enforcement agencies be made aware of our views, and that they respect this decision by keeping a DNA (do not assist) list current and functioning at all times.

This declaration will be made public in all media formats and we will post appropriate signage on all of properties, real and personal, to designate such property as "do not assist" property.

Insofar as protection of person is concerned, we the undersigned agree to wear a bracelet, hat, or other visible item identifying ourselves as "do not assist" persons.

We do this as a statement of faith in humanity and its potential to advance. We take this first step to provide moral and political leadership to the people. We all must become living examples of our beliefs and philosophy.

What we ask others to do, we must do first.

This declaration shall apply to ourselves, our spouses and/or co-habitators, our offspring, and our pets.

The Beautiful Wife forwarded a column by Walter Williams, a professor of economics at George Mason University, to a liberal friend of hers. Other than being an economist for half a century and having written ten books, Williams is a Black man who lived through poverty and real racism while growing up in Philadelphia. The ensuing incident tells a large part of the reason why we have the divide in our country. Then it gets worse.

Dr. Williams was not schooling people in this column about the misguided support of the current movement in America that is justifying release of criminals prematurely from jails, looting and rioting in the name of George Floyd and de-policing our cities. He could easily school them on that. What he wrote about in this column was the plight of "the poor" in America.

The column wrote about the fact that people below the poverty line have a better life in America than most middle-class in Europe and certainly have larger living quarters than the Europeans.

He told about all the material things they have like TVs, microwaves, smartphones, dishwashers, etc. I know a lot about what Mr. Williams wrote because I wrote a column on the same subject a few years back. Neither one of us were making things up - contriving things. This is information drawn directly from census figures. This is not information the census people contrived. This is information provided to the census by the people living below our poverty line themselves. As Williams points out, the well-being of these people does not address public subsidies like food stamps, rent subsidies or Medicaid. This should be non-controversial information. People should feel good that the less fortunate among us for the most part are not suffering.

One person it was sent to refused to read it. Another said she read the first paragraph and thought it was a parody. This is not a new reaction. While a center/right-of-center person reads multiple sources form the Left daily because the vast media is basically that, even when you try to provide some other info to the Left they are unwilling to read or hear a contrarian viewpoint. The BW had lunch with these same people and in the discussion she brought up shovel-ready projects. The women had never heard the term. These are college educated women who spout their political views on social media regularly. It is willful ignorance.

I am not blaming them or the people one encounters daily who bathe in their "unawareness." It is the fault of the sources they read. Just last week there was a senatorial hearing in Washington with Rod Rosenstein as the star witness. The first alert I received about the testimony came from the National Review. That never happens. I waited for the ones from the NYT, WaPo, Politico, The Hill, Axios, etc. They never came. The hearing never existed with its revelations from Rosenstein. The next morning none of them mentioned the hearing. Not even The Dispatch which was formed by people who used to be legitimate members of the press. If the testimony harmed Trump or Republicans, rest assured it would have flooded the airwaves.

If the people who rely on these sources are not even exposed to news how do you expect them to know. Obviously, they are prisoners of a deficient press with an agenda. Then matters got even worse.

You may have heard there was a dustup because U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) wrote an opinion piece that was published by the NYT. The subject was about the Insurrection Act and the possible use of the act by President Trump. This act has been implemented many times since it was passed in 1807. Go to Wikipedia and look at the list. Because it was Trump telling Governors that unless they got control of the looting, burning and rioting going on in their states, if he would invoke the act they stated fascism would descend upon our country. Even irresponsible former military leaders who had abdicated their leadership to Ben Rhodes jumped in and criticized Trump. What no one has mentioned is that since Trump lectured the Governors on their responsibility to their citizens the criminals have been abated and the real protestors have been freed to display their first amendment rights.

Cotton's column was not his first in the NYT. They know this guy could be President someday; he is currently a U.S. Senator. That gives them cachet. Despite the fact that the editor lied after a further time and said he had not read the column before publishing, it went through a vigorous editing process with it going back and forth between the NYT and Cotton. The final copy was approved and then published. That is when hell descended upon earth.

The readers of the NYT cancelled their subscriptions in droves. James Bennet, opinion editor, felt he needed to defend his publishing the piece which in itself is a mystery. Isn't that their job? Even he stated that. "We published Cotton's argument in part because we've committed to Times readers to provide a debate on important questions like this. It would undermine the integrity and independence of The New York Times if we only published views that editors like me agreed with, and it would betray what I think of as our fundamental purpose - not to tell you what to think, but to help you think for yourself."

That was until the next paragraph in his explanation where he began to backtrack. "But that probably just sounds platitudinous, particularly at a fragile moment like this in our national life. And it doesn't address specific concerns about our publishing this piece." By the next day he was in full-throated abdication of his first amendment obligations and denied he actually read the column before publication. Bennet apparently watched the Rosenstein hearings and adopted the complete ignorance defense.

David Brooks who writes for the NYT stated he was in favor of publishing the Cotton piece. He said he enjoyed reading pieces with which he does not agree because it makes him think. That is what we used to have as an ideal. Not anymore. Michele Goldberg wrote a column entitled Tom Cotton's Fascist Op-Ed. Did you notice she was advocating fascistic suppression of free speech and freedom of the press while calling another person a fascist?

The worse reaction came from another NYT columnist, Bari Weiss, though she was just explaining the situation. She wrote "The old guard (that would be editors like the 54-year-old Bennet) lives by a set of principles we can broadly call civil libertarianism. They assumed they shared that worldview with the young people they hired who called themselves liberals and progressives. But it was an incorrect assumption. "The new guard has a different worldview," "one articulated by [authors] Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff. They call it 'safetyism,' in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values, like free speech."

You can bet that every one of these people in the newsroom who were in open revolt are graduates of a prestigious journalism school. They are what we have been calling "snowflakes." They are being minted by our educational system to disregard our most precious rights that defend our freedom. They work at our most highly regarded publications and in 10 years they will be running them.

People often flippantly state we live in dangerous times. This is dangerous folks. Do you think the newsrooms at WaPo, USA Today, Chicago Sun-Times, LA Times, etc., are stocked with people any different than the people rending their clothing and forcing their editors to back down from defense of our essential protections?

Yes, many people are willfully ignorant. We cannot blame them when our "free" press is no longer free and advocates keeping their readers ignorant for their own safety. And these people call Trump dangerous.

Red, White, and Blue featuring TCR Editor Gary Polland on Fridays at 7:30 pm on Houston Public Media TV 8, replaying Saturday at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 8, Monday at 11:30 pm on Channel 8.2 and on the web at www.houstonpublicmedia.org.

Red, White & Blue, Like all business and education campuses, our show is off the air as we can't meet to tape. We hope to be back as soon as possible.

Gary Polland is a long-time conservative and Republican spokesman, fund-raiser, and leader who completed three terms as the Harris County Republican Chairman. During his three terms, Gary was described as the most successful county Chairman in America by Human Events - The National Conservative Weekly. He is in his twenty-fifth year of editing a newsletter dealing with key conservative and Republican issues. The last nineteen years he has edited Texas Conservative Review. As a public service for the last 17 years, Gary has published election guides for the GOP primary, general elections and city elections, all with the purpose of assisting conservative candidates. Gary is also in his 18th year of co-hosting Red, White and Blue on Houston Public Media TV 8 PBS Houston, longest running political talk show in Texas history. Gary serves on the Board of Directors of American Values, a national pro-family, pro-faith, conservative organization supporting the unity of the American people around the vision of our founding fathers and dedicated to reminding the public of the conservative principles fundamental to the survival of our nation. Gary is a practicing attorney and strategic consultant. He can be reached at (713) 621-6335.