RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/02/a-victims-of-communism-day-is-long-overdue/

The fact that socialists and Communists are still voted into power with swagger; the fact that this creed’s savage foot soldiers—Black Lives Matter and Antifa—are cast as pacifists, seekers of equity and justice demonstrates that Communists, despite their murderous past, “belong to the camp of democratic progress” in the eyes of the world whereas the Right is forever open to suspicions of unforgiven fascist and Nazi sympathies.

If anything, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression—that “800-page compendium of the crimes of communist regimes worldwide”—treads too lightly when it comes to qualitative comparisons between the Nazi and the “Marxist-Leninist phenomenon.”

On the quantitative front, “Nazism, at an estimated 25 million dead,” turned out to be distinctly less murderous than Communism, whose “grand total of victims, variously estimated at between 85 million and 100 million murdered, is the most colossal case of political carnage in history.”

Qualitatively, the “‘class genocide’ of Communism” is certainly comparable to the “‘race genocide’ of Nazism.” In its reach and methods, moreover, nothing compares to communism’s continual, ongoing invention of new classes of “enemies of the people” to liquidate. “Mass violence against the population was a deliberate policy of the new revolutionary order; and its scope and inhumanity far exceeded anything in the national past.”

The Jewish people have carried out “the solemn obligation to keep the memory of its martyrs alive in the conscience of the world.” The civilized world has internalized the methods and meaning of the “Final Solution.” As The Black Book observes approvingly, “Hitler and Nazism are now a constant presence in Western print and on Western television.”

Rumors and intel flew around for days leading up to Saturday, August 1. Dozens of activists were being bused into Austin, Texas, from Portland and Seattle to do to this city what they have done to both of those. Rumors suggested they wanted to destroy Austin police headquarters, the Texas state capitol, or both.

Downtown apartment residents received flyers warning them that the outsiders might attempt to gain entry to their buildings to get to the roof.

It should go without saying this activity would put numerous innocent people in harm’s way and constitute egregious violations of private property rights. Antifa and BLM activists have repeatedly demonstrated their disdain for the latter by destroying, defacing, and looting private property. Protesters surrounding cars, assaulting and shooting drivers and other innocents have repeatedly demonstrated their disdain for the former as well.

Protesters also targeted Austin city council member Kathy Tovo with a march on her home because she is the lone member of the council who has not committed to their demand to gut the Austin police budget. Tovo intends to gut it, but not by as much as the protesters demand.

The flyer above and other information suggested the groups intended to attack Austin police headquarters. The headquarters building has been the site of protests and often violent riots over the past two months. The activists have attempted to storm the building in the past but failed.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/cancel-culture-old-tyranny-new-bottles-bruce-thornton/

The last few weeks we’ve seen programmatically progressive media outlets purging their political bedfellows for deviating from the “woke” party line. Some, like erstwhile New York Times editor James Bennet, confessed and apologized for their alleged sins voluntarily, like an old Bolshevik apparatchik in a show-trial. Others, like Times editor Bari Weiss and Atlantic writer Andrew Sullivan, resigned before they were hustled to the guillotine, at least salvaging some self-respect. 

And it’s not just today’s people and institutions that are facing the baying mobs of mostly callow millennials who pitch a fit over anything that challenges their fragile self-esteem and “smelly little orthodoxies.” For months we’ve watched two-bit anarchists and race-hustlers knocking down monuments from our history as a graphic repudiation of America and its defining principles––a 21st century version of the old Roman damnatio memoriae, in which enemies of the state or emperor were disappeared from history by removing any public reference to them in inscriptions, statues, or books.

Indeed, today’s “cancel culture” is nothing new. It is just the latest manifestation of tyranny: As Aristotle defined it, “arbitrary power . . . which is responsible to no one, and governs all alike, whether equals or betters, with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will. No free man willingly endures such a government.”

Historically, the tyrant has achieved that power by violence, especially against anyone who appear to be a threat to his ambitions or power. Herodotus has a famous anecdote about the tyrant’s use of violence. In the 7th century BC, Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, deliberating over how to keep his power safe from rivals, sent a messenger to Thrasybulus of Miletus asking his advice. Thrasybulus led the messenger into a field of wheat, and as he questioned him during their walk, broke off the tallest ears of grain. Periander got the message: “Kill outstanding citizens.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/02/with-bill-maher-bari-weiss-condemns-cancel-culture-as-social-murder/

Former New York Times Opinion Editor Bari Weiss appeared on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday night criticizing cancel culture and calling it “social murder.” 

“It’s not just about punishing the sinner. It’s not just about punishing the person for being insufficiently pure. It’s about this sort of secondary boycott of people who would deign to speak to that person or appear on a platform with that person,” she said. “And we see just very obviously where that kind of politics gets us. If conversation with people that we disagree with becomes impossible, what is the way that we solve conflict? It’s violence.”

Maher invited Weiss and Harper’s Magazine columnist Thomas Chatterton Williams to the show after both signed the “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” published by Harper’s Magazine. In the letter, 150 “elites in academia and media” explain that limiting the “free exchange of information and ideas” could be detrimental to self-government and the writing profession.

“The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences,” the letter reads.

On Maher’s show, Weiss described the intentions of the letter in more detail and clarified the distinction between criticism and cancel culture. 

“What we’re trying to say with the letter — and what Thomas did in forming it — was saying what’s happening now with this growing culture of illiberalism is different from criticism,” Weiss explained. “Thomas and I, you, Bill, we’re used to criticism. Criticism is kosher in the work that we do. Criticism is great. What cancel culture is about is not criticism. It is about punishment. It is about making a person radioactive. It is about taking away their job.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/510073-supreme-court-declines-to-halt-trump-border-wall

The Supreme Court on Friday declined to block the Trump administration from using $2.5 billion in reallocated Pentagon funds to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

In a 5-4 ruling that broke along ideological lines, the court’s conservative majority denied a bid by interest groups to halt construction after a federal appeals court last month said the use of defense funding for the project is illegal. The court’s four more liberal justices dissented from the ruling.

The Sierra Club, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other challengers had asked the justices to lift their order from last July that allowed President Trump to begin spending the funds while legal challenges proceeded through the courts.

But the Friday ruling means the court’s July 2019 order, also decided 5-4, remains in effect despite a ruling by a federal appeals court in California last month that Trump’s diversion of defense, military and other funding was unconstitutional.

Justice Stephen Breyer, in dissent, said he feared the majority’s ruling “may operate, in effect, as a final judgment.”

Legal challenges arose early last year after Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border to free up additional funding. That came after a congressional spending bill allocated some $1.3 billion for border security, far short of the nearly $5 billion Trump said was needed to complete his signature project.