RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/05/09/craven-and-pusillanimous-at-the-chronicle/?print=1

The Chronicle of so-called higher education, that is.

On April 30, Naomi Schaefer Riley wrote a column for “Brainstorm,” the Chronicle’s blog, called “The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations [1].” When I say that there was nothing new in Ms. Riley’s column, I do not mean to disparage it. No: it is a splendid piece, a public service, really. It performs exactly the same service as the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Everyone knows, though few have the temerity to say, that “Black Studies” is an awful confidence game: an exercise in racial grievance mongering utterly without scholarly merit. In this, I hasten to add, it resembles many other pseudo-disciplines invented since the late 1960s to provide a home for intellectually challenged but politically fermenting denizens of our universities: Women’s Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Transgender Studies, etc. etc. Kingsley Amis once observed that much that was wrong with twentieth century academia could be summed up in the word “workshop.” “Studies” is the new “workshop.” Take a look at the “dissertations” Ms. Riley describes. They are cringe-making in their awfulness. Consider:

* “‘So I Could Be Easeful’: Black Women’s Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth,” by Ruth Hayes. “It began,” Riley writes, “because she ‘noticed that nonwhite women’s experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature, which led me to look into historical black midwifery.’ How could we overlook the nonwhite experience in ‘natural birth literature,’ whatever the heck that is? It’s scandalous and clearly a sign that racism is alive and well in America, not to mention academia.”
* Then there is “Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis of the 1970s,” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. “Ms. Taylor believes there was apparently some kind of conspiracy in the federal government’s promotion of single family homes in black neighborhoods after the unrest of the 1960s. Single family homes! The audacity! But Ms. Taylor sees that her issue is still relevant today. . . . She explains that ‘The subprime lending crisis, if it did nothing else, highlighted the profitability of racism in the housing market.’ The subprime lending crisis was about the profitability of racism? Those millions of white people who went into foreclosure were just collateral damage, I guess.”
* Riley’s pièce de la résistance is a work by La TaSha B. Levy. “Ms. Levy,” the Chronicle writes, “is interested in examining the long tradition of black Republicanism, especially the rightward ideological shift it took in the 1980s after the election of Ronald Reagan. Ms. Levy’s dissertation argues that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, John McWhorter, and others have ‘played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them.’” Riley asks: “The assault on civil rights? Because they don’t favor affirmative action they are assaulting civil rights? Because they believe there are some fundamental problems in black culture that cannot be blamed on white people they are assaulting civil rights?”

http://pjmedia.com/blog/obamacares-muslim-exemption/ Laws almost always create unanticipated consequences. This is certainly likely to be the case when politicians bend over backwards to accommodate the currents of political correctness. ObamaCare uses the Social Security language of the Internal Revenue Code to determine who is eligible for “religious conscience” objection to the insurance mandate. Specifically, the law provides […]

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2012/05/israels-national-unity-government-peace.html

Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer has a new article that comes via the antipodean J-Wire service. It’s entitled “Palestine – Israel has had enough”.

Writes David Singer:

‘The Palestinian Authority’s decision to unilaterally seek Palestinian statehood at the United Nations and UNESCO – in breach of its obligations under the Oslo Accords and the Roadmap – has propelled Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz into forming Israel’s government of national unity this week.

This was made abundantly clear when one of the four priorities announced by both leaders was “to move forward responsibly in the peace process”.

With the new Government now controlling 78% of the votes in the Knesset, a new offer is set to be made by Israel to the Palestinian Authority in a final endeavour to resolve the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza between Jews and Arabs.

Israel has endured the machinations of the Palestinian Authority for the last 19 years. Its continuing obduracy in demanding – as a minimum – a Palestinian State equal in size to 100% of the West Bank and Gaza – with its capital in Jerusalem – has been a major stumbling block in ending the conflict.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/the_rights_of_indigenous_people_and_the_rest_of_us.html

In early 2011, President Obama announced that the United States would sign the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Now the U.N. wants us to give Mt. Rushmore to the Indians. James Anaya, U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, spent twelve days in the U.S. meeting with representatives of Native Americans. Returning to Geneva, he urged the government to turn over control of lands considered sacred to the tribes, including the Mt. Rushmore site.

It was bound to happen.

With typical overstatement, the president said as he announced U.S. participation in the Declaration, “The aspiration it affirms, including respect for the institutions and rich cultures of native peoples, are ones we must always seek to fulfill.”

Always? Americans happily adapt and adopt parts of other people’s cultures (Chinese food unlike anything served in Beijing, pizza Italians wouldn’t recognize, St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo parties) and respect other parts (forms of dress, holy days and fasting for Ramadan). But there are aspects of “native” cultures that simply do not warrant respect: honor killings, female genital mutilation, slavery, stripping trees for cooking fuel, clubbing baby seals, and governance by the sword come to mind.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/the_stealth_legitimacy_of_j_street.html

Did you know that J Street — which is a political lobbying organization (please, let’s acknowledge it already) — is launching a new national election-year initiative? The people at J Street have plans to train the organization’s supporters to lobby for the candidates they support and to ensure the defeat of candidates supported by “right-wing Republican” Jews in this year’s presidential election. Perhaps that doesn’t surprise you, but what if you learned that some of those political training sessions were taking place in your local synagogues (Chicago and San Francisco), or Jewish community centers (Nashville and Minneapolis), or even your local Federation building (Philadelphia)?

A recent e-mail from Carinne Luck, J Street’s vice president for campaigns, announced the launch of a new J Street initiative, “Future of Pro-Israel.” Luck describes this purely political election-year initiative as J Street’s effort to set a new course in “national and communal politics.” Luck labels it a direct response to donations by two Jewish millionaires to two political organizations of Republican candidates for U.S. president. J Street makes no effort to conceal where donations to counter Republican support are supposed to go, but let’s spell it out: if you oppose people supporting Republican candidates, including the man who is the presumptive Republican nominee, where does one suppose your financial support is going to go? Here’s a hint: it’s going to an eight-letter word starting with D, and it isn’t Dinosaur.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3055/mexican-jihad

“Our porous southern border is a nightmare waiting to happen.”

As the United States considers the Islamic jihadi threats confronting it from all sides, it might do well to focus on its southern neighbor, Mexico, which has been targeted by Islamists and jihadists, who, through a number of tactics—from engaging in da’wa, converting Mexicans to Islam, to smuggling and the drug cartel, to simple extortion, kidnappings and enslavement—have been subverting Mexico in order to empower Islam and sabotage the U.S.

According to a 2010 report, “Close to home: Hezbollah terrorists are plotting right on the U.S. border,” which appeared in the NY Daily News:

Mexican authorities have rolled up a Hezbollah network being built in Tijuana, right across the border from Texas and closer to American homes than the terrorist hideouts in the Bekaa Valley are to Israel. Its goal, according to a Kuwaiti newspaper that reported on the investigation: to strike targets in Israel and the West. Over the years, Hezbollah—rich with Iranian oil money and narcocash—has generated revenue by cozying up with Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs and people into the U.S. In this, it has shadowed the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Tehran, which has been forging close ties with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who in turn supports the narcoterrorist organization FARC, which wreaks all kinds of havoc throughout the region.

Another 2010 article appearing in the Washington Times asserts that, “with fresh evidence of Hezbollah activity just south of the border [in Mexico], and numerous reports of Muslims from various countries posing as Mexicans and crossing into the United States from Mexico, our porous southern border is a national security nightmare waiting to happen.” This is in keeping with a recent study done by Georgetown University, which revealed that the number of immigrants from Lebanon and Syria living in Mexico exceeds 200,000. Syria, along with Iran, is one of Hezbollah’s strongest financial and political supporters, and Lebanon is the immigrants’ country of origin.

http://sarahhonig.com/2012/05/11/another-tack-dishonest-and-disgusting/

Back in 1942, George Orwell pointed out matter-of-factly that “so-called peace propaganda is just as dishonest and intellectually disgusting as war propaganda. Like war propaganda it concentrates on putting forward a ‘case,’ obscuring the opponent’s point of view and avoiding awkward questions. The line normally followed is ‘those who fight Fascism become Fascist themselves.’”

Just substitute “terrorist” for the “Fascist” or “Nazi” in Orwell’s text.

We have no way of telling whether said text was perused by Zeev Degani, current principal of Gymnasia Herzliya (the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium, or in its Hebrew moniker, HaGymnasia HaIvrit Herzliya). If he didn’t read this particular Orwell essay in the Partisan Review, Degani should.

Peace-propagandists, Orwell noted therein, “evade quite obvious objections” with “propaganda-tricks” which include “pooh-poohing the actual record of Fascism,” while “systematically exaggerating” alleged “Fascizing processes” within Allied ranks.

Orwell was intrigued by the “psychological processes by which pacifists who started out with an alleged horror of violence end up with a marked tendency to be fascinated by the success and power of Nazism.”

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/teaching-muslim-children-jihad-and-jew-hatred-in-toronto-%e2%80%a6-correctly/ A complaint filed by Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center has prompted an investigation of the East End Madrassah, an Islamic school which operates out of a public high school in Toronto, the David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute. As reported by the National Post [1], East End Madrassah’s level 8 […]

http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/19717-The-Renewed-American-Revolution-The-9th-Amendment.html
The Renewed American Revolution: The 9th Amendment

With the enlargement of federal powers and intrusions into individual’s lives, the 9th Amendment to the US Constitution, part of our Bill Of Rights, may well gain more judicial attention. The 9th Amendment should be elevated to central prominence, as it was intended, in applying judgment of all federal legislation, regulations and actions. Our revolution is based in restriction of central powers and must again be reignited to, no exaggeration, save our liberties.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The 9th Amendment is the least cited or relied upon in Supreme Court cases. The lack of agreement among constitutional scholars as to the specific meaning of the 9th Amendment is largely the reason. This lack of agreement also exceeds the general lack of agreement – usually along liberal and conservative lines – as to many other sections of the Constitution. Focus on transgressions of the first eight Amendments, more specific as to particular rights, and cases specifically concerned with how broad should be an enumerated (listed) power, was usually enough until now.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/46588

In 1960, as a young wife living with my husband on his Ivy League campus, I had a front-row seat when the Feminist Movement made its debut. I was doing nothing, according to Obama mouthpiece Hilary Rosen, because, after all, caring for our infant son, taking care of our home, and supporting the efforts of my equally hard-working husband Steve, was—ala Rosen’s characterization of worthy activity—the very definition of sloth.

After all, if Ann Romney, raising five sons, “never worked a day in her life,” as Ms. Rosen recently told a panel of slavering Obama acolytes on CNN, then my friends and I were certainly sleep-walking through our days.

Rosen’s remark was as repulsive to me as it was to most people. But it wasn’t surprising, any more than, say, watching a rhinoceros at the Bronx Zoo roll around in the mud, or a predatory scorpion spew lethal toxins into its prey. That is simply what those species do, just as the leftist species to which Rosen clearly belongs routinely engage in mean-spirited insults—particularly toward attractive, accomplished, and happily married Republican women. They truly can’t help themselves. Like Pavlov’s dogs, the Rosen species has a visceral, Tourette’s-like response that is usually delivered with a patronizing smirk, the better to conceal the near-hysteria they feel at the threat the Ann Romneys of the world represent to their very being.

But where did this species come from? Rosen is only the latest in a long line of angry lefties who, for the most part, have contaminated the public discourse. You have to go back 50 years to fully grasp the genesis of Rosen’s fuming, intolerant, envious brand of leftism.

1960, significantly, was the year that the Food and Drug Administration approved the birth-control pill developed by Harvard’s Dr. John Rock. For the first time in human history, women had just about foolproof control over reproduction. In America, this was celebrated by the women who would come to be known as feminists as the opportunity to be as promiscuous as the men they resented but secretly envied.