RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/culture-wars-and-degradation-language-bruce-thornton/

From Thucydides to George Orwell, the degradation of language during war and political conflict has been recognized. As Thucydides wrote of the brutal and violent civil war in Corcyra, “Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them.” Like truth, the integrity of language is also a first casualties in culture wars.

The culture war that has been waged for over half a century––and is now reaching a destructive absurdity in “wokism,” “cancel culture,” and blatant censorship and suppression of free speech––has made debased language one of its most important weapons. So insidious has been this process that even conservatives opposed to the progressive left’s illiberal and unconstitutional excesses legitimize these transformations of language by using that ideologically corrupted vocabulary.

Take, for example, using the word “gender” instead of “sex.” First introduced in the Fifties by sexologist and suspected pedophile John Money, this change in usage was popularized in the Sixties to reinforce the dubious idea that sex-identity is not binary by nature, but comprises multiple variations, just as linguistic gender is not restricted to masculine or feminine, but can classify nouns by other qualities such as “animate” or “inanimate.” Male and female, masculine and feminine thus are not facts of nature, but social, cultural, and political “constructs” that serve the interests of the prevailing regime of power.

In other words, using the word “gender” to mean “sex” insidiously reinforces the constructivist ideology underlying as well Marxist theory and its antihumanist economic and political determinism. It also gratifies modernity’s fatal hubristic conceit: that human reality can be manipulated, changed, and reinvented at will by “technicians of the soul,” as Stalin called the self-proclaimed improvers of human nature.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/11/16/illegal_immigrants_would_get_105_billion_from_reconciliation_bill_146739.html

The budget reconciliation package pushed by Democrats creates a new expanded child tax credit (CTC) that would pay illegal immigrants some $10.5 billion next year. All immigrants with children are eligible, regardless of how they got here and whether their children are U.S.-born. This includes the roughly 600,000 unaccompanied minors and persons in family units stopped at the border in FY2021 and released into the country pending a hearing. Cash welfare to illegal immigrants is not just costly; it also encourages more illegal immigration. 

Although it is referred to as a “refundable credit,” the new CTC, like the old additional child tax credit (ACTC) it replaces, pays cash to low-income families who do not pay any federal income tax. The new program significantly increases the maximum cash payment from $1,400 per child to $3,600 for children under 6, and to $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17. After 2022, the maximum payment would be $2,000 per child, but advocates hope the much larger payments will be extended. 

In an analysis conducted in October, my colleague Karen Zeigler and I estimated that illegal immigrants with U.S.-born children would receive $8.2 billion from the new CTC. However, we had assumed that the new program, like the old ACTC, would require children claimed as dependents to have Social Security numbers (SSNs).  But reconciliation (page 1452, line 14) would permanently repeal this requirement. 

Illegal immigrants are able to receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children, who are American citizens. In the case of the old ACTC, they simply acquired an individual taxpayer identification number, which is not hard, and then claimed their payment. In practice, only illegal immigrants with U.S.-born children could receive payments under the old system, since as American citizens those U.S.-born children receive SSNs. The permanent elimination of the SSN requirement means that even illegal immigrants whose children are also illegally in the country can receive the new expanded credit.  

https://www.lucianne.com/2021/11/17/biden_admin_looking_to_dump_kamala_harris_

Fox News Congressional reporter Chad Pergram reported Tuesday evening that he had been given a tip about Kamala Harris several weeks ago that said he should familiarize himself with the nomination process for a vice president in the House and the Senate. Pergram’s report comes after a bombshell CNN report Sunday that the White House was rife with rumors about Joe Biden contemplating nominating the flailing Harris to the Supreme Court to get her out of his administration and out of the line of succession. Jill Biden was asking about using the 25th Amendment to sideline Harris.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/supply-chain-for-dummies-a-fairy-tale/

Joe Biden cheerfully told Americans that most of them are too thick to understand what a “supply chain” is. Naturally, he understands it thoroughly. You can see with your very own eyes how well he has handled it. Since, as Joe said, you must be wondering why so many shelves are empty, I’m here to explain. Following the president’s wise advice, I will use small words and a simple story.

Let’s begin in the good ol’ days, not too long ago, when the shelves were magically full.

The story begins in a land ever so far away, where happy people worked and worked to make Christmas toys for children in Kansas.

When they finished making the toys, they placed each one in a little box and then placed lots of them in a great big box. They took that big box and many others like it to a good and sturdy ship to sail to America. Finally, after weeks at sea, the ship came close to the golden shore of California.

High up on the mast, a ship’s mate cried, “Eureka! I spy land ahoy!” and the ship sailed into a big dock near the City of Angels. But even the tallest, strongest men could not move the big boxes off the ship.

“Oh, my,” said someone on the dock. “Let’s get a hundred people together and see if we can move the boxes.” They tried and tried but the boxes still wouldn’t move. Finally, a very, very smart person came up with a good idea. “Let’s use a big crane and see if that works.”

And it did work. The big crane lifted the big boxes lift off the ship and lowered them very carefully onto the dock.

“But this is still a long way from Kansas,” sniffed one grumpy man. “The crane won’t reach that far.”

A very smart little girl said, “What about putting the boxes on top of train cars? The engineer and the conductor could take them to Kansas?”

“Oh yes,” said her friend. “Some of the other boxes could go on big trucks, too.”