RUTHFULLY YOURS

Sci-Fi Author Jerry Pournelle recently re-published a sixth grade reader from 1914. In his latest FIREWALL, Bill Whittle explains how full comprehension of a single paragraph from that hundred-year-old elementary school textbook eludes virtually all of today’s college graduates; shows why it is such a sin, and reveals the Progressive Struggle for Stupidity in all of its undeniable venality.

AMERICAN EDUCATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR STUPIDITY

Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall.

Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has republished, with his additional commentary, a completely forgotten – but far from forgettable – book called Literature Reader, Sixth Year, by Leroy E. Armstrong.

Literature Reader, Sixth Year, by Leroy E. Armstrong is not a novel or a scientific treatise or a book or Mr. Armstrong’s poetry. It’s a textbook – a California textbook: a collection of written tales and their analyses, the basics of literature, story structure and all the rest: that’s it and that’s all.

On a whim, I looked it up on Amazon, and on another whim, I clicked on a random link, and scanned the first paragraph I laid eyes on, which read:

Then Jason lighted the pile, and burnt the carcass of the bull; and they went to their ship and sailed eastward, like men who have a work to do. Three thousand years and more they sailed away, into the unknown Eastern seas; and great nations have come and gone since then, and many a storm has swept the earth; and many a mighty armament, to which Argo would be but one small boat; English and French, Turkish and Russian, have sailed those waters since; yet the fame of that small Argo lives forever, and her name is a proverb among men.

This is what sixth graders were reading one hundred years ago, in 1914, but if a college kid today graduated with a full and complete understanding of that one single paragraph they would be better educated than they are after a quarter-million dollars or so of student debt.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/confronting-the-muslim-brotherhood-in-the-american-heartland-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Dr. Mark Christian, the President and Executive Director of the Global Faith Institute. He is the son and nephew of high ranking leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in his home country of Egypt. After his conversion from Islam to Christianity, Dr. Christian dedicated his life and work to the proposition that “the first victims of Islam are the Muslim themselves.”

Dr. Christian joined the show to discuss Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood in the American Heartland, explaining Global Faith’s battle to stop Muslim Brotherhood front groups’ malicious plans within the “Tri-Faith Initiative” in Omaha, Nebraska. He also shared his conversion from Islam to Christianity, the dangers he has faced for doing so, his views on ISIS’s Islamic inspirations, and much more:

As the media-sanctioned rioting, bloodshed and looting continue in Ferguson, Missouri, evidence is emerging that police shooting victim Michael Brown wasn’t the upstanding citizen that many on the Left have claimed him to be.

All of this is happening as mobs have been attacking cops with Molotov cocktails and destroying community infrastructure. Some blacks in the region are reportedly randomly assaulting non-blacks as collective payback for what happened to Brown. Looting and property destruction are rampant. Scores of people have been arrested. Aircraft were ordered to fly at least 3,000 feet over Ferguson airspace after police said their helicopters were fired on from the ground.

A curfew was imposed, and the state’s feckless Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, stripped local police of some of their responsibilities, replacing them with state highway patrolmen. This, predictably, led to more looting of stores and all the things that usually happen when an angry violent mob is rewarded for its bad behavior.

Through it all, the Left is out in force in Ferguson, trying to make a bad situation worse. The criminal elements of the city have been emboldened by martyrized accounts of Brown, as they carry out a campaign of destruction against the civil order under the banner of “no justice, no peace.”

As happened in the Trayvon Martin case two years ago, the hulking, nearly 300-lbs. Brown has been portrayed as an innocent doe-eyed angel unfairly cut down by evil police as a promising future awaited him. In Brown’s case, he was said to be just days away from heading off to college.

But as one blogger observed, in this age of ubiquitous social media, the 18-year-old African-American man left behind,

“a cache of rap songs … that contain pretty much what you’d expect out of modern rap – lots of boasting about murdering, taking drugs, drinking, and sex with hos.”

In one of them labeled “Free$tyle Big’Mike,” one performer raps, “My favorite part’s when they bodies hit the ground. I soak ‘em up like I’m wringin’ out a sponge.”

Ferguson happens a few times every month. More often in the summer when tempers are hot and crowds of bored men and women fill the streets looking for something to do. Teenagers ransack stores. Small cities stretch their budgets in a bad economy to put as many cops as they can on the street.

And then somewhere between the open fire hydrants, the stores that do most of their business in EBT cards and lottery tickets, the check cashing places and furniture rental outlets, something happens.

And it happens a lot more often than you think.

A crowd gathers. Fists rise in the air. The police deploy. The EBT stores, check cashing places and furniture rental outlets roll down their shutters. A tense hour passes before the scene fades away leaving behind a crude graffiti scrawl of a wannabe gangsta and his favorite pit bull, a few faded color photos and some purple candles guttering in the night underneath his portrait.

Not the full scale rioting, looting and curfews. That’s the sort of thing that doesn’t happen on its own.

It has to be community organized into being.

Fergusons usually happen locally, but when it’s convenient then the looting and car stomping go national. The Trayvon Martin case happened in an election year. So did the Michael Brown case.

Maybe we can look forward to another Ferguson in 2016 and every two years after that.

There’s no need to belabor how Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson profit from the racism industry. Even the crowds booing them in Ferguson know that by now. Both men became irrelevant dinosaurs in 2008.

Obama’s election marginalized Jesse and Al. Jesse Jackson was shoved aside, muttering something about cutting off a part of Obama’s anatomy on FOX News. Sharpton became Obama’s messenger boy to the black community while scoring a teleprompter reading gig on a liberal cable news network.

“Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.”
– Euripides, 5th Century B.C. Greek tragedian
No, we are not all descending into madness. Just our political leaders, our news media, our schools, and assorted loose human cannons who are plumbing the depths of insanity and institutional irrationality to see when their and our craniums crack. And they seem to want the rest of us to go berserk and take up residence with them in their loony bin where we can all tiptoe through the tulips and have huggy-bear sessions with our killers. They are mad, and they wish to make us mad. Insanity is the new norm.
The America Heritage Medical Dictionary defines insanity (or madness) as:
1. Persistent mental disorder or derangement. Not in scientific use.
2. Unsoundness of mind sufficient in the judgment of a civil court to render a person unfit to maintain a contractual or other legal relationship or to warrant commitment to a mental health facility.
3. In most criminal jurisdictions, a degree of mental malfunctioning considered to be sufficient to relieve the accused of legal responsibility for the act committed.
In a sane world, men would not, for example, protest the right of Israel or any other sovereign nation to defend itself against attacks by its neighbors or by terrorist groups like Hamas. Instead, they would urge the Israeli government to wipe out its enemies and uproot them, or at least spray Hamas with a root-killing chemical (shall we call it “DDT” – Deter Deranged Terrorism?) and leave their former subjects and human shields to fend for themselves.
Another mark of madness is the spectacle of Jews opposing Israel’s existence and blaming Jews for anti-Semitism, and even accusing them of racism. Daniel Greenfield, in his August 8th FrontPage article, “J Street Accuses Jews of Racism, Blames Jews for Anti-Semitism,” noted another form of madness:
After Hamas violated yet another ceasefire, anti-Israel group J Street stepped up to do what it does best. Attack Jews and Israel.
Jeremy Ben Ami [a spokesman for J Street] then launched into a pitch for letting Hamas smuggle as many weapons as it wants “Occupation, Blockade, Frustration, etc…), accused Israel of racism, warned Israel to “heed to the advice of its friends in the White House and the State Department and at a minimum should show them the respect that the country’s closest ally deserves.”
Then Jeremy Ben Ami claimed that the conflict was promoting anti-Semitism and ranted about “growth and extent of hatred of the other, intolerance and outright racism in our own Jewish community.”

Despite the conviction in Israel that its military actions against Hamas in Gaza are justified, the notion that this third Gaza war in the past six years has been a consequence of the failure to conclude a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority is widely accepted across the globe.

For Palestinians, the argument continues, there is no choice but resistance and confrontation since diplomacy and non-violence have not ended the occupation. For that reason, many Palestinians claim that Hamas is fighting not simply to lift the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip but also to give them their freedom.

The claim resonates broadly with the international community. Even as they recognize Israel’s right to defend its citizens, many political heads of state also emphasize that the Jewish state must adopt policies that offer Palestinians hope for the future.

Let us stipulate that the Oslo peace process has failed to fulfill the expectations of the Palestinians for a state with Jerusalem as its capital and recognition of what has been adopted as the nation’s sacred right of return. But has the peace process been totally without positive consequences for Palestinians who live on the West Bank?

Palestinian institutions operate in cities; schools, colleges, and universities provide education for the population, security forces guarantee some measure of stability widening the ambit for economic growth.

All of this is less than ideal, but is it not better than the alternative circumstances in Gaza where the population has been held hostage to the political Islamist agenda of Hamas and its promise of liberation through perpetual war against Israel?

For the question is not whether resistance hurts Israel – it does – or whether constant confrontation reminds the world of what is widely regarded as an illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, but rather whether negotiations, in the context of a commitment to peaceful co-existence can produce more benefits for more Palestinians than war, always presented as the only alternative.

“Just this past year, J Street leadership cried foul when they were not voted into the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. After reading the most recent statements made by J Street during Operation Protective Edge, it has been made very clear to me that once you blame the Jews for anti-Semitism, you have really simply gone beyond the pale.So I ask: Really J Street? Why do you really supposedly support the existence of a State of Israel? What’s the point?”

Ok, its official, my mind has been blown.

If you’ve read my other essays, it will not be a shock to you that I’ve never agreed with J Street’s supposed “Pro-Israel and Pro-Peace” mission. However, one point made by J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami in his most recent “Word on the Street: Difficult Questions and Hard Truths” has taken me over the edge.

In making his main points, Ben-Ami states “Failure to solve this conflict is eating away at support for Israel around the world, damaging the country’s legitimacy and, in some cases, fanning growing flames of anti-Semitism.”

Wait, what?

Did he just insinuate that the horrible, quickly increasing anti-Semitism all over the world, INCLUDING now the United States, is due to Israel’s inability to “solve the conflict?” Only a week ago, Rabbi Joseph Raksin (Z’L) was brutally murdered on his way to Shabbat morning services. While at the moment this is not being investigated as a hate crime, with violent anti-Semitism swiftly increasing around the world and specifically anti-Semitic incidents occurring in this neighborhood in Miami, it’s difficult not to see the connection. News reports from this past Shabbat in Miami show a community in a state of terror, with police escorts supervising observant Jews walking to the synagogue and Jewish parents scared to let their children play outside. It’s hard to believe that this is really happening in the United States in the year 2014.

In the subsequently published J Street position paper “Aim for Conflict Resolution, Not Just a Ceasefire” there is NO mention made of concern for the increase of global anti-Semitism. There is, however, significant concern and attention given to the “rise in intolerance and racism among the Jewish community” as it states “From the revenge killing of Muhammed Abu Khdeir to the very public anti-Arab pronouncements by members of the Knesset and by ordinary citizens, voices of hatred and racism have emerged and actions have occurred that run counter to the most basic of Jewish values…The growing lack of tolerance for political dissent and for opposing viewpoints should be of grave concern to Jewish leaders in the United States and in Israel. Racism and intolerance should have no place in our community.”

THE GOOD ENGLISH RABBI HAS BEEN “KNIGHTED” OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT AND IS CALLED “RABBI LORD JONATHAN SACKS”….A TITLE THAT I FIND ANNOYING….RSK
As antisemitism rises, leaders of the great faiths must unite against
the ruthless pursuit of power masquerading as religion

The novelist Rebecca West once said that Jews, having suffered so
much, had an “unsurprisable soul”, In 2000 our daughter, then a
university student, attended an anti-globalisation rally in London
that turned into a tirade against America, then Israel and finally
Jews. “Dad, they hate us,” she said through her tears. Hearing those
words in Britain in the 21st century showed me that I had a
surprisable soul.

Jews in Europe have been shaken these past few weeks by the virulence
of the demonstrations about the war in Gaza that also turned into
something older and darker. More than a century after the Dreyfus
trial the cry of “death to the Jews” has been heard again in the
streets of Paris. Seventy years after the Holocaust, “gas the Jews”
has been heard again in Germany. In Britain last month antisemitic
incidents were at almost their highest level in 30 years. These are
danger signals not just for Jews but for Europe.

After our daughter’s experience I saw events move rapidly. In August
2001 at the UN international conference against racism in Durban,
Israel was accused by NGOs of the five cardinal sins against human
rights: racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide and
crimes against humanity. A new blood libel was born. Days later came
9/11, and almost immediately an opinion poll found that 40 per cent of
Pakistanis believed it was carried out by Mossad, Israel’s secret
service.

In a strange world of blatant hypocrisy and distorted equivalences, the United States — with the help of an all too cooperative media — is turning to victimization as the definition and explanation of most human relationships.

The tragedy of the death of an 18-year-old during an altercation with the police is not to be vouchsafed. Nor can the long and brutal history of U.S, race relations – particularly with African-Americans as victims – be denied or forgotten.

But the instantaneous assumption that the police were at fault [still to be attenuated] and in the innocence of the victim [tarnished by surveillance video of a strong-arm robber] – is symptomatic of a larger social evil. It is the instantaneous and unsubtle attribution of victimhood to individuals caught up in life dramas whatever their real character.

Not many of us sail through life without suffering what we deem injustice. Those may, objectively, be larger or smaller afflictions. But for the individual concerned, they are monumental and cannot be wished away. But to celebrate those kinds of miscarriages of life – especially before they are analyzed – is to create a false atmosphere of overwhelming injustice and persecution which imperils society.

The phenomenon is so widespread that sometimes it not only trivializes real misbehavior, but becomes a joke. A New York mother complains about an aggrieved innocent holding a young thief in a bearhug, capturing him for the police after he and a companion had stolen her telephone. The mother excuses her own obvious parental neglect by yammering about her son having fallen among thieving companions. But she insists, and that is where it turns ridiculous, but an all too common phenomenon, that he is a victim rather than a child who obviously is launched on a criminal career, a menace to society.

All this is compounded, of course, by the 24-hour media news cycle with its appetite for new revelations whether vetted or not and commentary by anchors who rarely know the background of these complicated issues much less having a professionalism about their trade. One of the strangest phenomenon of our times is that these “newsmen” reporting on current history have little knowledge or apparent interest in past history itself.

When sarcasm is mixed with fury, there is nothing like Yiddish to hit the mark. For those unfamiliar with the gems in this article , there is a glossary at the end
So now I’m reading there’s a campaign in the works to unseat a grubber na’ar named William Schabas from the Commission…the UN tribunal that is set to try Bibi for war crimes connected to the conflict in Gaza. Bibi’s on trial, Israel is on trial, all Jews around the world are on trial.
Just another day at the UN, no?
The funny part is that this shmendrick is openly hateful against us. Always has been. Always will be. Look it up.
Schabas was picked to head this inquisition…and he’s Canadian. This is so annoying. Canada? When did Canada ever hurt anybody?
Oh sure. There was that time years ago when the MacKenzie King government was asked how many Jewish refugees it would accept from the Holocaust. “None is too many,” came the (still famous) response. But let’s forget about that, bygones be bygones as we say at the club.
Normally, Canada has never been famous for putting Jews on trial. For that we’ll always have Europe.
Actually 5,000 of us were finally let in and all of us moved to St, Urban Street in Montreal and prayed for Maurice “Rocket” Richard to score us another goal. (Who is Wayne Gretsky?) So from the land of Maurice Richard comes William Schabas. Nu, how the mighty have fallen, aye?
This trial has already been decided and I don’t have to read the papers. I read Kafka, where somewhere he writes something like this:
“First the hanging…then the testimony.”