RUTHFULLY YOURS

About five years ago, Rush Limbaugh predicted the end of the National Football League. Drawing on the rash of stories about professional football players prone to concussion, the radio talk giant saw clearly that the Left would use a serious and very real problem to try to bring down yet another time-honored American institution. The NFL’s method of handling the bad publicity was to pour money into studies and agree to a $1 billion class-action settlement for retired players and their families. No one believes the NFL should not address an important health issue and it appears, in the wake of that public relations counterpunch, most Americans have come to grips with the inherent risk of playing a violent game and the fact that no one is forced to play. Choice won out. https://amgreatness.com/2017/08/28/jim-browns-lesson-nfl/

But as Michael Walsh is always warning, the Left never stops, never sleeps, and never quits. There’s always another arrow in their quiver and if the concussions story missed the target, perhaps the Colin Kaepernick campaign to kneel in protest during the national anthem would be a surer bet.
The Kaepernick story even had the promise of being a bullseye in its potential to undermine both football and American patriotism in one clean shot. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback started the trend of refusing to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner” last year at the start of a preseason game, later explaining, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” Some other players in football and other professional sports followed suit. For the most part, however, the protest has generated more scorn than applause.

One reason for that is the strong suspicion that Kaepernick was just an opportunist looking to grab some headlines as his football skills were waning. Another is the scuttlebutt that Colin’s new squeeze is a radical activist who encouraged him to protest in an overt (and self-destructive) way. Whatever the reason, the move doesn’t seem to have worked in his favor. Now a free agent, Kaepernick remains unsigned. The stunt hasn’t exactly endeared other Leftists to the public, either.

Last week, before a preseason game, the Cleveland Browns decided they were going to try and “win” something (a concept otherwise lost on them for a long many years) by becoming the team with the largest number of anthem kneelers.

For a brief moment, the protest seemed to pay off. Weak-kneed coaches, wishy-washy owners, and moronic PR flacks made excuses for the antics of these wealthy man-children who thought they were accomplishing something important by insulting a large swathe of their fan base. Nobody in the NFL seemed capable of expressing anything other than fear—and why not? In the media world surrounding professional sports, political correctness is a powerful force. And on the other side, the specter of boycotts loomed large if these protests spread. Uttering the wrong word about them could cost the league millions of dollars in lost advertising, but the ongoing controversy could cost them in ticket sales. Playing it safe down the middle, if not the smart move (because, ultimately, impossible), was at least an understandable instinct. They were set to catch it on both ends.

And then came Jim Brown.

For Clevelanders and football fans alike, Jim Brown is more than just a legend in this city. He is a demigod. He was the Cleveland Browns during their glory days and before the Super Bowl became the sine qua non defining football greatness. He held the NFL rushing record of 12,312 yards until it was broken by the Chicago Bulls’ Walter Payton in 1984. Brown is still the Cleveland Browns all-time leading rusher.

Sadly, Brown left the team and the NFL suddenly, prior to the start of the 1966 season. He had bigger goals—the most important being a dedication to racial justice. His activism upset some, encouraged others, and inspired many. He wasn’t the easiest person to talk to or to reason with, but no matter what he said or what he did, the respect he earned was always warranted. His image has been a formidable presence in a city short on championships. He has been a symbol of pride for Cleveland even during the darkest days of burning rivers, blown saves in game seven, and last minute fumbles. It was fitting that Brown played a big role in Cleveland’s first championship parade in decades when the Cavaliers finally ended our city’s sports drought in 2016.

Jim Brown is not someone the Left can credibly challenge. His social justice bona fides set him apart. No liberal could successfully denigrate his position when it comes to standing for the national anthem. It was natural for reporters to make tracks to get his take on the Browns controversy, however, and it’s likely they were surprised at his reaction and some were certainly disappointed.

Several years ago, when I heard about Female Genital Mutilation, FGM, I thought I had been mistaken. The idea that such an atrocity taking place in modern times could not be reconciled with my naive thinking at the time. After reading Alice Walker’s book, Possessing the Secret of Joy, I realized this hideous act toward women was alive and well in the third world countries of Africa practiced among Muslims and some Christians alike. What I could not wrap my head around was the silence from the western world against this barbarism. In addition, as I learned more about the various layers of intrusiveness in FGM, I became even more disturbed by excuses made in the name of religion and culture.

A couple of decades ago, a friend in the mental health field told me a startling but unsubstantiated piece of information. In the 1980s, long before FGM came to light in the Western world, she heard from other colleagues that a few American physicians in a large metropolis performed FGM on the daughters of wealthy Middle Easterners willing to pay the price. Although she was adamant her sources were reliable, I had difficulty believing this. Now, I think, perhaps there was some truth to her story. We will never really know. What we recognize, however, is this hideous action, a crime against humanity, is being performed right beneath our noses in the Midwest and, possibly, other parts of the U.S. If it is not being activated on U.S. soil itself, American girls are being sent away for “vacation cutting.” These young girls are sent home to countries which turn a blind eye toward this primitive ritual. Even though Egypt is trying to curtail the practice, it is included among these countries having over 90 percent of women who undergo FGM.

According to Equality Now:

The federal law addressing FGM in the U.S.: 18 U.S. Code § 116 ‘Female Genital Mutilation’ makes it illegal to:

• Perform FGM in the U.S.

• Knowingly transport a girl out of the U.S. for the purpose of inflicting FGM.

This law began in 1996 regarding the performance of FGM in the U.S., but it was not until the last couple of years the transportation action that is taking your daughter for “vacation cutting” was criminalized.

As an added protection, under half of the states have laws criminalizing this practice. Recently, Maine’s state representatives, mainly Democrats, narrowly defeated a bill to join these other states. The Portland Press Herald reports:

The debate over the bill, L.D. 745, was not whether the practice happens worldwide but rather whether it is occurring in Maine, particularly inside the state’s growing communities of African immigrants.

“I do not believe that it is happening in the state of Maine. I truly do not believe that,” said Rep. Lois Galgay Reckitt, D-South Portland. “And I believe if it was happening, it would be prosecuted vigorously by the federal (laws) or by the abuse statutes in this state.”

But Rep. Heather Sirocki, R-Scarborough, said that since introducing the bill she has heard from numerous people i

Politically charged street brawls broke out in Berkeley, California, on Sunday, with police arresting 13 charming participants on charges including assault with a deadly weapon. One Twitter video showed masked activists kicking a man curled in fetal position on the ground; the beat-down stopped only when a journalist, Al Letson, shielded the man with his body. “I was scared they were going to kill him,” Mr. Letson said.

As Charlottesville drew attention to the worst elements of the far right, Sunday’s melee revealed an increasingly violent fringe of the radical left that has received far less media coverage, much less criticism. It’s called Antifa, pronounced “An-tee-fa,” which is short for “anti-fascist.”
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Antifa members sometimes claim their movement spans the globe and dates to the 1920s and ’30s, citing the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, where protesters shut down a march by the British Union of Fascists. But in the United States and Britain, Antifa grew in the 1980s primarily out of the punk rock scene. As Nazi and white supremacist skinheads became a bigger part of this largely un-policed subculture, far-leftists met violence with violence, calling it self-defense.

As it grew beyond punk, Antifa’s adherents organized through the now-defunct Anti-Racist Action network and now sometimes through the Torch Network, as well as other less visible groups. Many activists also aligned themselves with the broader anti-globalization movement. But Donald Trump’s election has become the catalyst launching Antifa into a broader political movement.

The Antifa members we’ve interviewed shun the Democratic Party label, saying their activism constitutes its own political orientation. They’re mostly anarchists and anarcho-communists, and they often refer to fellow protesters as “comrades.” Adherents typically despise the government and corporate America alike, seeing police as defenders of both and thus also legitimate targets.

The anti-fascist anarchist website CrimethInc.com recently summarized its philosophy: “In this state of affairs, there is no such thing as nonviolence—the closest we can hope to come is to negate the harm or threat posed by the proponents of top-down violence . . . so instead of asking whether an action is violent, we might do better to ask simply: does it counteract power disparities, or reinforce them?”