RUTHFULLY YOURS

He understood the “bohemian know-nothings” very early

http://www.nationalreview.com/

Norman Podhoretz, who turned 84 on January 16, is usually considered nowadays a commentator on American political, foreign, and religious affairs; with the late Irving Kristol and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he has been a key figure in the neoconservativeintellectual movement of the last 40 years. As editor-in-chief from 1960 to 1995 of the New York monthly Commentary, published by the American Jewish Committee, he presided over and helped bring about the movement of Jews from the margins to the very center of American cultural and intellectual life. He is certainly one of the most significant figures in the life of the mind in America since World War II.

But Podhoretz’s early career was that of a literary critic, educated at Columbia and Cambridge Universities, where he was the protégé and disciple of two of the greatest nondenominational literary critics and moralists of the 20th century: Lionel Trilling at Columbia and F. R. Leavis at Cambridge. “Nondenominational” is an appropriate word because Trilling and Leavis were in some sense neoconservative traditionalists, but, unlike their great contemporaries T. S. Eliot and C. S. Lewis, they were not religiously committed or orthodox writers. Though the young Podhoretz studied simultaneously at Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary, and spoke Hebrew, he was not religiously observant. This was to change in later life.

Having ignored the Palestinian Authority’s flagrant breaches of the terms of the negotiations process, several European countries have now officially censured Israel for abiding by them.

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2014/01/europes-diplomatic-hypocrisy/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=ffa72aed57-2014_1_20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-ffa72aed57-41165129

If diplomacy is war by other means, in recent days the Europeans have been taking to the diplomatic warpath amidst an increasingly strident attitude toward Israel and its policies on Jewish communities over the 1949 armistice lines. The European position on Israel’s settlements has often been tagged as hypocritical and replete with double standards, but in recent days the European reaction to announcements of new homes for Jews living over the green line, including in eastern parts of Jerusalem, has been so disproportionate as to appear almost unhinged.

On Thursday, Israeli diplomats in London, Paris, Rome, and Madrid were all hauled in by government officials to be subjected to protest and rebuke at the news that the Israeli government had issued housing permits for 600 new homes in Jerusalem and 800 in the settlement blocks, which under just about any conceivable re-drawing of the borders would remain part of Israel.

It is a rather strange turn of history to find that even in the 21st century European governments are still trying to tell Jews where they can and cannot live. Strange, that in a manner that almost smacks of old-style colonialism, Europeans are still trying to determine the borders of other peoples in other parts of the world.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4136/last-christian-middle-east The increasing speed with which the Christians of the Middle East are fleeing would suggest that… it is entirely possible that the next time the Pope celebrates Mass in Bethlehem, he will be the last Christian in the Middle East. The fact, like it or not, is that under the rule of the Jews […]

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2750/No-Regrets.aspx

I’ve been mulling how — or even whether — to mark the appearance of six entries on American Betrayal in the January 2014 issue of The New Criterion. The issue contains an essay by editor Roger Kimball and five letters, all devoted to my book, or, rather, to Andrew C. McCarthy’s review of American Betrayal, which appeared in the December 2013 issue.

Why so much ink? The answer is simple. Andy McCarthy, the celebrated former federal prosecutor, noted author and commentator, had the temerity to write positive things about my book in his December review. Like a clanging bell to Pavlov’s dog, this review drove Ronald Radosh and Conrad Black to churn out letters to the editor explaining to McCarthy the error of his ways. By my count, this becomes the fifth, maybe even the sixth piece by Radosh, and the fourth or fifth by Black. Harvey Klehr and John Haynes also write in general protest. I understand that David Horowitz, too, wrote in, but decided to withdraw his letter. (Too bad; I would love to have read Horowitz’s fifth attack.) Meanwhile, editor Kimball asked M. Stanton Evans — who originally endorsed American Betrayal and later published an article entitled “In Defense of Diana West” — to write a lone letter of support. McCarthy then replies to all. By the time all is said and done, the issue, purportedly devoted to Reagan and Thatcher, is also a backdoor symposium on American Betrayal.

Meanwhile, the author of said book sufficiently fascinating to this tiny band of anti-American Betrayal extremists was not invited to comment. The New Criterion didn’t even let me in on the fuss — which is a little like finding out you were the guest of honor, or, in this case, dishonor, at a party you weren’t invited to. Frankly, it’s better that way. Judging by the way Messrs. Black, Radosh and Horowitz are treated in the issue, it’s clear that I would have been a sixth wheel.

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/01/obamacares_domino_effects.html Adjunct instructors at colleges are only one of the many groups whose hours were arbitrarily cut as a direct result of ObamaCare.   The ObamaCare mandate defines “full-time” work as averaging 30 hours per week.  Afraid that they would be forced to pay enormous amounts of money to cover health care costs for employees, college administrators created a “new math” scenario […]

English-Language Media Ignores Breivik’s Coming-Out As A Nazi — on The Glazov Gang
The mass murderer confesses of wanting to destroy the counter-jihad movement; Where is the media coverage?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/english-language-media-ignores-breiviks-coming-out-as-a-nazi-on-the-glazov-gang/

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/mindless-progressivism/?singlepage=true With elections looming in 2014, it is about time for Barack Obama to gear up another progressive “war” against the rich, the limb loppers, the fat cats, the tonsil pullers, the “enemies” of Latinos, the jet junketers, the women haters, and those who knew neither when to stop profiting nor how the government had […]

http://washingtonexaminer.com/a-contrary-view-on-bob-gatess-duty-as-he-saw-it/article/2542414

By now, a lot of journalists have mined all the “money quotes” from former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s memoir, Duty.

Even before the book came out, we learned that Gates is contemptuous of Congress, believes that Vice President Joe Biden has been wrong on pretty much everything in foreign policy for four decades, that Hillary Clinton is a politically-motivated poseur, and that he believes his “minimalist goals” on Iraq were realized.

These revelations have to be considered in the context of two facts: First, Gates was the first defense secretary ever held over from one administration to another despite the glaring differences in policies, ideologies and personalities; and second, that by virtue of the fact that his name isn’t Donald Rumsfeld, he apparently believed he’d be treated with greater respect and dignity than was his predecessor.

Kerry’s Oblivious “Peace” Efforts In Kuwait, after 10 failed trips to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinian authority, Secretary of State John Kerry proudly declared “Everywhere I go, even here today, everybody I talk to expresses gratitude to the efforts the United States is making … to try to make peace between Palestinians and […]

http://spectator.org/print/57466

SIFTING THROUGH THE HOGWASH

You might think that in the sixth year of his presidency, Barack Obama would no longer be blaming George Bush for everything that is wrong in the world. And you’d be wrong, as he proved in another tiresome speech this morning.

For about fifty minutes, Obama droned on, telling us how he would use his administrative powers (and possibly work with Congress) to “reform” the intelligence gathering activities of the NSA and, presumably, the rest of the intelligence community. He began by lecturing us (for those who didn’t pay attention in fourth grade or see the Disney movie about “Johnny Tremain,” Paul Revere and the “Sons of Liberty”) about the history of American intelligence gathering. Most important to him, Obama told us that the “worst abuses” occurred before he became president.

As a senator, he reminded us, he opposed “warrantless wiretapping,” and told us that the Bush-era “enhanced interrogation techniques” which, he said, contradicted our values. (The EITs, for those who forget too quickly, were outrages such as slaps to the face, and which — according to George Tenet’s memoir — produced more valuable intelligence than all the rest of the intelligence community’s efforts combined.) And he reminded us that he might not be president but for the sacrifices of those such as Martin Luther King who were spied on by their government.

So how does Obama want to correct the NSA’s abuses of its authority — either real or imagined in the media frenzy surrounding the Snowden leaks — to satisfy the world? Well, he really doesn’t know.