RUTHFULLY YOURS

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“Patriotism,” said Samuel Johnson in 1775, “is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” A little more than a hundred years later, Oscar Wilde wrote, “Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.” In 1906, Ambrose Bierce published The Devils Dictionary. In it he accused Samuel Johnson of being too gentle; Bierce defined patriotism as “the first resort of the scoundrel.”  From Mark Twain to H.L. Mencken, wits have had great fun belittling patriots and patriotism.

Patriotism is a positive force. In a cynical age, patriotism appears dated; it is out of sync with progressive beliefs. But true patriotism is deeply embedded. It accepts and withstands criticism. In Notes of a Native Son (1955), James Baldwin wrote: “I love America more than any other country in this world and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” That is as it should be – the right to criticize is implicit in free speech. Patriotism is devotion and attachment to one’s homeland and fellow citizens; it does not mean total obeisance, as is required by those from Black Lives Matter and Antifa. Patriotism should not be confused with nationalism, which is divisive, intolerant and nihilistic. In a multiracial and multicultural country, patriotism is what binds a disparate people. Patriotism is inclusive and feeds on love, while nationalism is partisan and is nourished by hate.

Patriotism was the theme of President Trump’s speech at Mount Rushmore on July 3rd. That was as it should be, as the United States celebrated its 244th birthday. If one were to read only the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, or the start of Associated Press’ Jill Colvin’s postmortem, “After a weekend spent stoking division, President Donald Trump…”, one would conclude that Mr. Trump’s speech in South Dakota was dark and divisive. However, if one read it, without knowledge of the speaker, it would appear uplifting and optimistic.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/08/big-philanthropy-and-the-battle-against-systemic-racism/

The millennialist mindset of Big Philanthropy and its fellow travelers leaves one susceptible to any world-saving scheme that comes down the pike.

Who would have thought the Gates Foundation would endorse tearing down statues of Christopher Columbus, Ulysses S. Grant, George Washington, and other dead white men?

Sure, you won’t find “mob violence,” “vandalism,” or “destruction of public property” in any grant applications, but the paroxysms of rage racking our country and the desire to rip racism from America by root and branch is the end-product of Big Philanthropy’s governing ideology.

To understand why, you have to know the difference between charity and philanthropy.

When a charity sees a hungry widow and her toddler daughter, it buys food and gives it to them. Save-a-Soul Mission would offer a sermon with the soup but that was pretty much the end of it.

When a philanthropy sees a hungry widow and child, it pays 1,800 overeducated, post-graduate credentialed, deracinated, privileged children of the elites to study crop yields, food distribution patterns, income inequality, demographic trends, and to design and implement a comprehensive 600-page program using the most sophisticated computer models to predict what will absolutely, certainly, definitively eliminate poverty. In the meantime, it will place the widow’s child with foster parents of better means and provide a micro loan to develop the mother’s entrepreneurial superpower.

Where charity seeks to feed the hungry, scientific philanthropy seeks to eliminate the causes of hunger. The charitable impulse says if you save one person you have saved the world. The philanthropic impulse says system-wide change will be the salvation of humanity.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/09/companies-must-answer-for-their-support-of-the-radical-black-lives-matter-org/

“There are plenty of organizations working to help blacks and other minorities succeed in this country but aren’t bent on turning the U.S. into a socialist hellhole. Corporate executives should take the time to learn about them.”

Several companies have been bragging recently that they’re providing financial support to the official Black Lives Matter organization to burnish their PR image. No doubt they’re getting Woke points for doing so. But do the executives at those companies have any idea how radical this group is and what it’s trying to achieve?

The Daily Signal reported earlier this week that at least 18 corporations have pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation.

The list includes: DoorDash, Deckers, Amazon, Gatorade, Microsoft, Glossier, 23andMe, AirBnB, Unilever, Bungie, Nabisco, Dropbox, Fitbit, Developer Digital, Skillshare, Square Enix, The Game Co., and Tinder.

The Daily Signal notes that other companies said they were giving to Black Lives Matter, but didn’t specifically say it was to the foundation.

Private companies are free to give their money to whomever they want. But you’d think that the executives at these corporations would have done the least bit of due diligence before forking over the funds.

So, here are some questions for these companies, and any others that are giving money or encouraging donations to the BLM foundation.

Do your shareholders and employees know that their company is supporting a group run by “trained Marxists”?