RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberalism-crises-political-philosophy-religion-storey-kass-bloom-cancel-culture-war-11631889543?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Liberalism is in trouble. I don’t mean the narrow “liberalism” of the post-1960s Democratic Party, although that’s in trouble, too. I mean liberalism in the wider, classical sense—a view of government and society embracing free markets, representative democracy, individual freedom, strict limits on state power, and religious neutrality.

Twenty-five years ago, that understanding of liberalism was almost unquestionable. Not anymore. On the left, markets generate inequality, democracy works only when it achieves the right outcomes, individual freedom is uninteresting unless it involves sexual innovation or abortion, the state is everything, and religion doesn’t deserve neutrality. On the right—or anyway the intellectual/populist right—markets destroy traditional moral conventions, democracy is mostly a sham, individual freedom encourages behavioral deviancies, state power is a force for good, and the First Amendment’s ban on the establishment of religion was likely a bad idea.

Partisans will dispute these characterizations, but the liberal order in America (and Europe) is under attack—and not without reason. Political debates in Washington are bereft of good faith, the education system idealizes self-hatred and sexual confusion, and even corporate leaders—who until yesterday could be counted on to champion patriotism and hard work—eagerly recite the maxims of idiots.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/new-durham-indictment-exposes-second-leg-hillary

Nearly two years after evidence emerged that the infamous Steele dossier was a political dirty trick filled with Russian disinformation and disproved allegations, Special Counsel John Durham unloaded a new indictment that exposes a parallel effort by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to flood the FBI with more dubious Trump-Russia collusion dirt.

In painstaking detail, Durham laid out in the indictment Thursday how Democrat superlawyer Michael Sussmann used Clinton campaign funds to construct a now-debunked memo and other evidence alleging that computer communications between a server at the Alfa Bank in Russia and the Trump Tower in New York might be a secret backdoor communication system for Trump and Vladimir Putin to hijack the 2016 election.

Sussmann delivered the package in mid-September 2016 — just weeks before Election Day as Trump and Clinton were locked in a tight race — to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker, even after the team of computer experts warned the theory was a “red-herring,” according to the indictment.

And then Sussmann falsely told Baker, the prosecutors alleged, he was providing the information to the FBI solely as a good citizen, and not on behalf of any client.

In fact, Sussmann was working on behalf of a tech executive and the Clinton campaign and charged nearly all the work on the Alfa Bank narrative to the Democratic presidential campaign, including his meeting with Baker, the indictment stated.

The alleged lying, Durham argued, deceived the FBI into thinking the allegations were coming from a neutral source — Sussmann had been a cybersecurity expert — and not an election-motivated client.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/macarthur_was_fired_milley_should_be_courtmartialed.html

Douglas MacArthur was one the nation’s greatest generals.  In his time, there was no more revered, lauded, and beloved military figure.  He graduated first in his class at West Point, where, after service in WWI, he served as its superintendent.  During WWII, he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army in 1944 and given command of all Army forces in the Pacific.  On September 2, 1945, it was MacArthur who accepted Japan’s unconditional surrender, ending the war.  Following the surrender, he served as the military governor of Japan, helping to usher in a modern government and economy.  When North Korea invaded South Korea, in June 1950, it was MacArthur whom Truman put in command of the U.N. forces to repel the invasion and prevent South Korea from falling to communism.  It was a no-brainer.

After MacArthur drove the North Korean forces back across the 38th Parallel, the official demarcation line between the North and the South, beginning with a brilliant landing at Inch’ŏn harbor, the Communist Chinese sent massive forces into Korea in support of the North and drove the U.N. forces back below the 38th Parallel and into South Korea.  After recovering, MacArthur once again commanded his forces to send the enemy back into North Korea.

Unfortunately for MacArthur, he had an ego to match his brilliant military acumen.  It was this brash and flamboyant side that resulted in his being unceremoniously relieved of command of the U.N. forces.

Truman’s stated policy was for a more limited war in Korea to limit casualties and not risk a third world war.  MacArthur disagreed with this policy and wanted to expand the conflict to continue the advance into China and said so, publicly.  In doing so, he defied the commander-in-chief, President Truman, and thus, he was deemed to have threatened the civilian-military control balance.  For this transgression, along with several other earlier episodes of defiance, on April 11, 1951, Truman removed MacArthur from his command for insubordination.  In a statement made to the American people regarding the firing, Truman explained he had done it “so that there would be no doubt or confusion as to the real purpose and aim of our policy.”  In short, the civilians are in charge and set the policy, not the generals.

It has now come to light that while Trump was president, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark Milley, on his own initiative, in a demented effort at professional courtesy, contacted a top-ranking Chinese general to give him the “heads-up” that if the U.S. were to attack, he would call ahead to let him know.  In addition, Milley communicated to and apparently coordinated with speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and then–minority leader Charles Shumer, in the waning days of the Trump presidency, to limit Trump’s abilities as the constitutionally designated commander-in-chief by improperly inserting himself into the nuclear launch sequence.  Not only were these acts insubordinate, but they arguably constitute conspiracy to commit treason.  They make what MacArthur did look like an infraction of failing to salute a superior officer.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/afghanistan-through-michael-scheuers-eyes-andrew-harrod/

Many Western observers “have ignored the very real accomplishments and popular acceptance of the Taliban government in Afghanistan,” then-CIA analyst Michael Scheuer wrote anonymously in 2002. His previously-analyzed book, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, contains sobering analysis, which foresaw the failure of American-led nation-building efforts in Afghanistan 20 years later.

Scheuer had focused on Afghanistan while tracking Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit in the years before and after September 11, 2001. Although since his 2004 retirement from the CIA he has exposed himself as an anti-Israel, conspiracy-mongering crank, his 2002 writings about attempts to liberalize  Afghanistan were highly thought-provoking. Already at the time he had criticized that the “Afghan war, then, is an opportunity for social work of international scope, not an opportunity to destroy al Qaeda.”

Afghanistan’s recent history of the mujahedeen defeating Soviet occupation in the decade 1979-1989 demonstrated for Scheuer the foolhardiness of any Afghan Islamic democracy project. “In fact, it is vital to recall that, next to the Soviets, the biggest losers in Afghanistan were the Muslim world’s Western-minded scholars, politicians, and intellectuals,” he wrote. He explained:

The Afghan jihad confronted the theoreticians of democratic Islam with a hard reality. The Red Army was not defeated by a democratic revolution, but by an Islamist revolution grounded, guided, and steeled by God’s words as found in the Koran and explained by the Prophet. Driven by their faith, the mujahedin used bullets, not votes, to win one for Allah.

Quoting Harvard University political scientist Tarek Masoud, Scheuer noted a “basic political fact” about democracy in Islam’s Arabic heartland. Masoud had observed that

there exists no grassroots movement for democracy in the Arab world, largely because democracy does not resonate with the average Arab. It has no basis the Arab past and is tainted by its association with the West.

Scheuer cautioned Americans who celebrated the quick American-led overthrow of Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers following 9/11. Many of these Westerners “have taken their lead from Mrs. Jay Leno and the Hollywood wives and equated the fall of Kabul with the liberation of Dachau.” But he noted how the Taliban’s sharia supremacy had found favor among many Afghans, for now the “murder, bribery, kidnapping, and extortion that the Taliban had all but eliminated have again become commonplace.” “Although reviled by the West as violent medieval madmen, the Taliban teamed its imposition of strict Islamic law with a slow process of rebuilding and modernizing Afghanistan’s war-ravaged infrastructure,” he added.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/16/mark-milley-exposes-the-myth-of-american-democracy/

Milley’s attack on civilian control of the military is the latest indication that our wokeist ruling class will take no prisoners in its assault upon the pillars of the American constitutional order.

This week’s deeply unsettling revelation of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley’s alleged late Trump administration-era perfidy, bordering on high treason, is but one glaring fusillade in a years-long crusade by America’s decrepit ruling class to condemn and ultimately subjugate us “deplorables,” “wrong-thinkers” and all others with a conservative or traditionalist worldview. It is a shot across the bow in that roiling cold domestic conflict, and a clarion call as to the relevant stakes. It is also a brazen assault on one of the most rudimentary defining features of America’s constitutional order — an assault that exposes the lie that the ruling class and its left-wing echo chamber denizens care one whit about the very “democracy” they invariably claim to cherish.

To recap, a leak of a forthcoming book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, “Peril,” claims that two days after the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot, Milley was so bothered by former President Donald Trump’s demeanor and conduct that he deemed it necessary to take unilateral action outside the formal chain of command. Specifically, Milley allegedly convened a rogue meeting with senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon’s de facto war room, to tell them not to accept military orders from anyone unless he was personally involved.

In effect, Milley, haunted by hysterical cable news-induced nightmares and caving to delusions of grandeur, took impetuous action to cut out the commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces himself from the formal chain of command. He did so, we are made to believe, out of fear the lame-duck president might launch a high-scale attack or nuclear weapon strike, perhaps against China.

Although the qualifier “allegedly” is perhaps strictly necessary to describe Milley’s actions, it is worth noting that Milley’s office responded to the leak by issuing a nonapology “apology.” Milley’s “calls with the Chinese and others in October and January were in keeping with (his) duties and responsibilities conveying reassurance in order to maintain strategic stability,” the response statement from spokesperson Col. Dave Butler read.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/17/taxpayers-spend-more-to-prop-up-government-than-they-do-on-themselves/

One would think that in a nation founded on liberty that we’d be free to spend more on personal consumption than the government takes from us. But that’s not the case. Americans are paying more in taxes than they spend on themselves. Anyone who thinks this is healthy has a profoundly warped sense of right and wrong.

In 2020, according to Terence P. Jeffrey at CNS News, who did the arithmetic using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, American “consumer units” – a BLS term – “spent a net total of $17,211.12 on taxes” sent to Washington, state capitals, and local halls of government. Meanwhile, they spent “only $16,839.89 on food, clothing, health care and entertainment combined.”

Apparently the tribute paid to government isn’t enough. Americans just have to “give” more. The Biden administration is expecting to extract trillions more from us to pay for government programs it hopes will cement a permanent Democratic majority in Washington. We’re told that the agenda will be paid for by hiking taxes on the rich, but the reality is, “in the end, average Americans, not the rich,” will have to “pick up the tab.”

A few on the left who are more honest about the plans and the worldview that informs those schemes will make the claim that every penny earned belongs to government, and we’re allowed to keep some of it for ourselves because government is a kind and charitable institution. Americans are certainly free to hold that opinion. But not one of them has the moral right to put such a perverted idea into practice.

Yet it happens every day. Politicians, not all but enough to engage in large-scale racketeering, believe the dollars they rob without a conscience from Americans belong to them.