By Rep. James Banks The following op-ed appeared at The American Mind on July 2, 2020. Let's quit pretending that the riots which swept the country this June, and the ongoing mob assault on statues of our natural heroes, have anything to do with George Floyd or even race. The chaos in our streets is emblematic of something much deeper happening in our society. America is clearly undergoing an existential struggle. The important question we need to ask is: What is that struggle? The struggle is designed to appear like good old-fashioned class warfare. But is it? Are oppressed, working peoples who live in squalor revolting against their oppressors? Take a closer look at the mob. A new study by Pew research says only 1/6 of the protesters are Black. Four out of five are Democrats. This is not the poor working class fighting for a livable wage. It's an act of performance art staged and underwritten by our nation's elite, in the tradition of Woodstock or Occupy Wall Street. A viral video was shared recently of a white woman clad in $300 worth of Lululemon designer yoga apparel yelling at a Black male police officer and an Asian female police officer that they are "part of the problem." She's not fighting for justice. She's fighting to quiet her own conscience. This isn't a proletarian revolution. This is a generational fight within our ruling elite class. For decades, the elites have taught their children that America is a bad place. It's an evil country, they say: To be patriotic is to be ignorant about America's many sins. Be woke, the upper classes bark at their kids! Open your eyes to all that is wrong with the U.S. and its history. Well, the children have internalized their parents' messages. And they've come to this conclusion: If you're not actively revolting against "the system," i.e. destroying America's institutions, you're enabling it. And so they've taken to the streets to chant "Defund the Police," tear down our statues, loot our businesses and vandalize our churches. The irony is that these people are "the system." You've probably received dozens of emails from multinational corporations promising to fight injustice or "systemic racism" in recent weeks. Silicon Valley executives have become quite transparently hostile toward prominent figures for failing to share the accepted talking points. The New York Times staff led a mutiny against their own opinion editor for allowing a conservative voice to have a platform in their pages. America's elites are scrambling to find ways to show they're on the side of the oppressed so that they, too, can be considered victims. They don't care about producing real change--they just want to be last one in line for the guillotine. One writer put it this way: This is a revolution that comforts the comfortable. Meanwhile, the Democrat mayor of Minneapolis is still in office. The Minneapolis chief of police still has his job. Minority-owned businesses are being destroyed. Democrats stalled the best effort in Congress to deliver police reform. And George Floyd is still dead.

By James Banks Have you turned on the news, seen organized groups pulling down statues--not of Confederate soldiers, but of our Founding Fathers or other presidents--and found yourself wondering what's going on? My wife Amanda and I have watched with disgust as memorials to our country's great heritage are attacked and vandalized. Our three girls are watching too. They ask: Why is this happening? I've been wrestling on how to give them an answer. We could try to give these groups the benefit of the doubt. Was it too dark and they didn't see that they were pulling down a statue of George Washington? Perhaps our education system has failed and some don't realize Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence and was a critical figure in our fight for Independence? Or that Ulysses S. Grant actually fought to save the Union, the Confederacy surrendered to him at the Appomattox Court House and was a great leader in the Reconstruction efforts? Surely, they forgot that Abraham Lincoln was the signer of the Emancipation Proclamation that ultimately led to the abolition of slavery in America? But that's not what's going on. I don't know how to tell my daughters the truth, because the truth makes Amanda and I feel sad and angry. You see, pulling down these statues isn't a mistake. The groups pulling down statues are taking their cues from prominent figures in our nation's elite. You can find their ideas in op-ed pages of the New York Times, on the news and even our children's textbooks. What's going on, then? Some call it a revolution, but it's a fundamental shift in the narrative about who we are, what we are, and why we are a nation. On one of the statues of George Washington pulled down in Portland, the numbers 1619 were graffitied on his side. What is 1619? It's a reference to the year African slaves were brought to North America for the first time. It's also the name of a new school curriculum published by the New York Times that's being presented to our children in school. The 1619 project teaches that America, at its core, is an irredeemably racist nation. According to Nikole Hannah Jones, the brainchild of the 1619 project, the Founding Fathers fought for independence from Britain not to protect the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness like they said they were, but to uphold the institution of slavery. This is an absurd recasting of the birth of our nation, and it's completely false. They don't want you to dwell on the fact that George Washington freed his slaves toward the end of his life and expressed to see a plan for abolition in his will. Or that Civil Rights icon Martin Luther King fought for equitable treatment under the law using Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. But members of the Pulitzer Prize Board ignored those pesky details and historical inaccuracies. Earlier this year, they announced they're giving Nikole Hannah Jones, the founder of the 1619 project, our country's most coveted recognition and highest honor--the Pulitzer Prize. Not only did they accept these lies as truth, the Pulitzer Prize Board celebrated them and signaled we should celebrate them too. If they can get you to accept this rewriting of history, they can get you to say anything. And so, taking their cues from our nation's most prominent voices and cultural elites, lawless "protesters" are ripping down statues of some of our country's revered figures. They say, and I'm paraphrasing, "Anyone who helped build America is a racist because America is a racist nation"--that's what they think. "You can't have pride in a country that is irredeemably racist. You shouldn't honor the flag that represents it. And when that flag is presented, you should kneel." This is bigger than a simple call for police reform. This is a dramatic retelling of the American story. If we don't push back on it, we may find ourselves living in a nation we don't recognize when this is all done.

By Jim Banks "You can't get a product. You are not going to get a product for months." That's what Brian Edwards, a medical supplier in California, has been telling dozens of people per day when they call searching for critical medical supplies that, before this year, they took for granted would be in stock. The Chinese government's mismanagement of the novel coronavirus not only spread the virus worldwide, it shut down many supply chains that the U.S. and other countries had become accustomed to; indeed, that the U.S. deeply relied upon. As we consider how our post-pandemic country will look, we should be careful to avoid a repeat of these mistakes. U.S. dependence on Chinese manufacturing was no accident. The Chinese government's "Made in China 2025" strategy to consolidate manufacturing supply chains and impose itself as the world's preeminent source of high-value manufactured goods has been well-known for years. While we have neglected to safeguard our industrial base, Beijing was aggressively subsidizing its country's manufacturing plants and creating supply chains that maximized its economic and geopolitical leverage. Some of my colleagues and I have worked the White House and the Department of Defense in the last two years to restrict purchases of Chinese-manufactured critical materials for use in U.S. military systems, and the Federal Communications Commission and other agencies have taken the first steps to stop Huawei and related entities from dominating next-generation communications hardware. But the COVID-19 crisis demonstrates that a broader approach is needed. The U.S. government should develop better, near-real-time insight into supply chains. Occasional reviews of individual supply chains create blind spots that major crises will reach unexpectedly. With the tools that are out there, it should be easier than ever for the government and its critical suppliers to share data to provide resiliency and security. The government also needs to take the lead in maintaining and expanding critical American supply capabilities. It will be crucial to prevent the pennies-on-the-dollar purchase of distressed American assets during or immediately after the pandemic by firms linked to the Chinese government. This includes many major Chinese firms (such as Huawei). The country that knowingly took steps that allowed the disease to spread worldwide should not be allowed to financially benefit from those decisions. At the same time, the government should ensure that American businesses get the liquidity and capital they need to maintain and expand critical supply chains within the United States. This can be done through direct investment into manufacturing plants, but it could also be done by making purchase agreements and building national stockpiles of needed supplies. The much-discussed Defense Production Act allows the federal government to both expand and ensure manufacturing capabilities, and the $1 billion that Congress provided to the DPA program in the CARES Act should be promptly supplemented with the direction that the government identify gaps and fragile sectors of supply chains and build capacity to bulwark them against future crises. Though the current focus is, deservedly, on China, we should not think that there are no other foreign countries that seek to identify, develop, and exploit critical gaps in U.S. supply chains. Russia has always been a leader in the production of critical defense materials and a known bad actor on the global stage. Indian companies are routinely cited by U.S. authorities for dumping materials in critical and noncritical sectors of the economy. As we have seen recently with everything from thermometers to toilet paper, though, the supply chains that we rely on for our normal lives can be stressed in any number of ways. A strong national approach to securing our manufacturing base is a necessary step for security and prosperity. The federal government is the only entity both large enough and focused enough to lead this effort. Congress should therefore act quickly, as soon as the next stimulus bill, to establish a supply chain monitoring and investment framework that will get America back to work and provide for a cohesive and united future.