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October 2021

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Biden vs. Americans – his priorities, like climate change, ignore top worries of most voters Joe Biden has suffered the worst ratings slide of any president since World War II

By on October 26th, 2021

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-polls-ignoring-voter-concerns-liz-peek

“When a majority (52%) of middle-income Americans and of Independents (51%) think Biden has abandoned them, Democrats should hit the panic button and radically rethink their agenda. Unhappily for Joe Biden, a reboot seems unlikely, as does a turnaround in his ratings anytime soon.”

Joe Biden has suffered the worst ratings slide of any president since World War II. That is probably not the kind of history Biden hoped to make when he secretly met with White House chroniclers in March and asked them how to be a “consequential” president like FDR.  

Why has the country turned against Uncle Joe? Simple: Biden is ignoring voters’ concerns. 

Voters are worried about inflation, jobs, crime, education and our open border, while the Biden White House is laser-focused on climate change, transgender rights, racism and reducing inequality. 

In a recent CBS/YouGov poll, only 37% of respondents said Biden and Democrats are focused on issues they “care a lot about.” That’s not good. 

Joe Biden is not walking down this misguided path alone; he is hauling nearly every agency of his government right along with him.  

For instance, the FBI, instead of focusing on the surging murder rate in our nation, has been ordered to hunt down “domestic terrorists” among the parents rightfully objecting to the racist curriculums being taught to their children.  

The State Department, having abandoned hundreds of Americans in Afghanistan and grievously misplaying every encounter to date with China, recently took time out to celebrate “International Pronouns Day,” issuing an explainer about “Pronoun Proficiency.”  

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Why Is America Financing the Chinese War Machine? by Lawrence Kadish

By on October 26th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17891/financing-china-war-machine

How did the Chinese come to possess such prowess? From us.

The Chinese… know that a democracy whose economy is weakened by COVID of a curious origin, a multi-trillion dollar budget that would plunge us into historic debt; a nation staggering under the burden of a possibly enfeebled national leadership, and a military humbled by being ordered off the Afghan battlefield by its commander-in-chief may be a once great country that has lost its way.

Washington needs to pivot and provide appropriate and necessary incentives for businesses to expand our once formidable manufacturing base here in the United States. America has the means, skills, and resources to return to its role as a super exporter, but to do so will also require us to get our economic house in order and freeze our nation’s debt ceiling. An economy that stands on the brink of a multi-trillion dollar self-induced debt makes us vulnerable to a fiscal collapse. Financial discipline will be required if we actually wish to stop our financing of the Chinese war machine.

Historians who have studied the decline and fall of great modern empires must be queasy these days.

Many have chronicled how a once mighty China lost its sovereignty to colonial powers during the early years of the 20th Century. Their enfeebled empress and a humbled military were swept aside by a European coalition of nations only to find that China was to become the bloody prize of Japanese generals whose forces raped and massacred their way to Beijing.

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Blinken Seems Intent on Sparking a Crisis Over Jerusalem The State Department wants to open a consulate to the Palestinians there despite Israel’s objections.By Eugene Kontorovich

By on October 26th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blinken-biden-foreign-policy-crisis-over-jerusalem-embassy-consulate-israel-palestine-11635195523?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The biggest diplomatic spat between Israel and the U.S. in recent memory is brewing over the Biden administration’s insistence on opening a consulate to conduct diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority and locating it in Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. Despite vociferous Israeli protest, the State Department has repeatedly said it would push forward with opening a consulate anyway, and Secretary Antony Blinken will personally lead the effort.

The U.S. Embassy to Israel is already in Jerusalem, and it has a consular department that provides services to Palestinians. Opening a separate, independent diplomatic mission would undermine a longstanding bipartisan policy of treating Jerusalem as the exclusive capital of Israel.

The consulate plan is a way to undo in part President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem without paying the political price of fully repudiating a move that had broad support even among Democrats. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh understands this and recently crowed that Mr. Blinken’s consulate is a stepping stone to a recognition of Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem.

Under settled international law, Israel’s consent is required for any diplomatic mission to be opened on its territory. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Gideon Saar have all forcefully rejected the idea, as has the opposition Likud party. Jerusalem is one of the few issues that unite Israelis across the political spectrum.

The State Department won’t take no for an answer. After Mr. Lapid made Israel’s opposition clear, Mr. Blinken said: “We’ll be moving forward with the process of opening a consulate as part of deepening of those ties with the Palestinians”—a clear démarche to Jerusalem to acquiesce or face consequences. This contempt for Israel’s government is extraordinary.

When Mr. Trump in 2017 recognized Jerusalem as being in Israel and subsequently moved the U.S. Embassy there, he implemented the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, enacted with massive bipartisan support. That put to rest an absurd and anachronistic U.S. policy that treated Jerusalem as not being located in Israel at all, a legacy of an abortive 1947 U.N. initiative to make it an “international city.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Doing the Enemies’ Bidding Eileen F. Toplansky

By on October 26th, 2021

In his 1980 book titled Seeds of Progress, Leonard E. Read reminds the reader of the prescient words of George Washington.

There is a natural and necessary progression from the extreme of anarchy to the extreme of tyranny, and arbitrary power is most established on the ruins of liberty.

Leonard E. Read then goes on quote Dr. Ludwig von Mises who wrote “Socialism is planned chaos.  Anarchy is unplanned chaos.”

Consider the weeks of violence and anarchy in Portland and other cities.  It was the first step in the communists’ designs upon America.  The continuing erosion of our culture is intended to restrain America’s potential in every conceivable way.

Furthermore, in the chapter “Two Ways to Go Wrong” Read emphasizes that those who would deny impartial justice will heartily support anarchy and tyranny.

First tell me who you are and then I’ll tell you what your rights are.

A society in which gross inequalities before the law are tolerated will prevent the market from operating in its economic life.

And so socialism and communism worm their way into the fabric of our lives aided and abetted by the most Leftwing President this country has ever experienced and our economy is worsening.

As Read asserts “[w]hen the government enters your home, takes your possessions, keeps them for himself or gives it to others to obtain their votes, it is coercive force.”  

When Biden mandates what people must do with their bodies and when his henchmen (DeBlasio, Murphy, Lightfoot and Newsom) dictate where Americans can dine, shop and enjoy life, we are in the throes of a dictatorship.

The internal enemies of the state are ensuring that America’s youth are denied learning about their birthright and the foundational ideas such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Without understanding and valuing these basic principles, the young cannot perceive they are worth defending.  Mull over the erasure of the 1776 Project by Biden.

Instead, indoctrinate them with misinformation and outright lies and demand they regurgitate the information.  Create at least two generations of historically illiterate youth.  Consider the administration’s embrace of Critical Race Theory.                                                                                           

Eliminate literature that emphasizes character building. Instead advocate tracts of repetitive hate-filled ideas that  pit student against student based on their skin pigmentation. Reflect on the adoption of the works of anti-White author Ibrahim Kendi with nary a word from the Department of Education.

Distort language so students are ignorant of the nuances of words and ideas and cannot engage in genuine critical thinking or introspective questioning.  Heck, men are women and girls can be erased altogether. Confusion abounds because as Jacques Barzun stated, “[i]ntellect deteriorates after every surrender to folly.  Unless we consciously resist, the nonsense does not pass us by but into us.”

Should one, however, dare to speak out, quickly punish the offending individual. Consider the ongoing censorship and assault against speakers on campuses and no rebuke from the administration. Consider the inhumane incarceration of Americans who marched on January 6, 2021.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Book Review: ‘Woke Racism’ by John McWhorter For the left, antiracism is the new religion, and ‘pious, unempirical virtue signaling’ is a form of political activism.By Tunku Varadarajan

By on October 26th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-woke-racism-by-john-mcwhorter-11634596283

‘This book frankly leapt out of me,” writes John McWhorter, “during the summer of 2020.” The country was convulsed not just with Covid-19, but with protests in response to the killing of an unarmed black man by a white policeman whose actions were caught on camera. Mr. McWhorter began to write in the first week of August. Eight weeks later, he’d finished “Woke Racism,” a book that hits back at the “antiracists” who prowl public life in search of transgression, and whose mission to rid America of “racist” thought he likens to that of a religious cult. His book is a cry from the heart, and readers should gauge the depth of his indignation from the fact that its working title was “F*** ’Em.”

This eloquent manifesto is Mr. McWhorter’s 22nd book, a majority of those on the subject of linguistics. His is a split personality: A linguist in his day job as a professor at Columbia University (specializing in creoles, particularly the Saramaccan language in Suriname), he’s also an outspoken commentator on race whenever the national mood requires it. As Mr. McWhorter’s thinking on race is in conflict with that of the black American political mainstream, he’s often miscast as a black conservative by glib taxonomists. But he’s careful to point out that he wasn’t “thinking of right-wing America as my audience,” even as he acknowledges that many liberal readers will think him “traitorous” for writing this book.

Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America

By John McWhorter

Mr. McWhorter’s target audience is, precisely, the one that would regard him as racially incendiary. It includes white progressives who have “fallen under the impression that pious, unempirical virtue signaling about race is a form of moral enlightenment and political activism.” Equally, it comprises black people who have succumbed to the “misimpression” that the way to their own salvation lies in “a curated persona as eternally victimized souls.”

Mr. McWhorter’s targets in “Woke Racism” are antiracist crusaders whom he calls the Elect—borrowing a term used by the essayist Joseph Bottum in his book “An Anxious Age” (2014). Mr. McWhorter chooses not to call these people Social Justice Warriors or Inquisitors, deeming those labels “unsuitably dismissive” and “mean,” respectively. He’s not the first to trace the “rootstock” of their ideology to critical race theory. This is a once-fringe belief, now muscling its way into mainstream thought, that every individual’s fate is determined by racial “hierarchy” and power. The theory contends, writes Mr. McWhorter, that a nonwhite in America is “akin to the captive oarsman slave straining belowdecks in chains.”

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