RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14794/the-dangerous-stalinism-of-the-woke-hard-left

People on the “woke” hard-left seem so self-righteous about their monopoly over Truth (with a capital T) that many of them apparently see no reason to allow dissenting, politically incorrect, views to be expressed. Such incorrect views, they claim, make them feel “unsafe.” They can feel safe only if views they share are allowed to be
expressed. Feeling unsafe is the new trigger word for demanding censorship.

The other dangerous similarity between the Stalinists and the “wokers” is that both disdain due process for those they deem guilty of political incorrectness or other crimes and sins. They reject any presumption of innocence or requirement that the accuser bear the burden of proof.

For Stalinist and “wokers,” there is no uncertainty or fallibility. If they believe someone is guilty, he must be. Why do we need a cumbersome process for determining guilt? The identities of the accuser and accused are enough. Privileged white men are guilty perpetrators. Intersectional minorities are innocent victims. Who needs to know more? Any process, regardless of its fairness, favors the privileged over the unprivileged.

That is why I make the controversial claim that today, the “woke” hard-left is more dangerous to civil liberties than the right. To be sure there are hard right extremists who would use — and have used — violence to silence those with whom they disagree. They are indeed dangerous. But they have far less influence on our future leaders than their counterparts on the hard-left. They are not teaching our college age children and grandchildren. They are marginalized academically, politically and in the media. The opposite is true of hard-left Stalinists. Many have no idea who Stalin even was, but they are emulating his disdain for free speech and due process in the interests of achieving the unrealizable utopia they both sought. They also have in common the attitude that noble ends justify ignoble means.

We must always remember that it is not only the road to hell that is paved with good intentions. It is also the road to tyranny.

Civil liberties are in greater danger today from the intolerant hard-left than from the bigoted hard-right. This may seem counterintuitive: There has been far more violence — mass shootings in malls, synagogues and other soft targets — from extremists who identify more with the hard-right than with the hard-left. But the influence of the hard-left on our future leaders is far more pervasive, insidious and dangerous than the influence of the hard-right.

People on the “woke” hard-left seem so self-righteous about their monopoly over Truth (with a capital T) that many of them see no reason to allow dissenting, politically incorrect, views to be expressed. Such incorrect views, they claim, make them feel “unsafe.” They can feel safe only if views they share are allowed to be expressed. Feeling unsafe is the new trigger word for demanding censorship.

amgreatness.com/2019/08/30/the-boomer-revolution-and-its-consequences/

The Wall Street Journal this week published the results of a survey that found Americans’ values are shifting drastically, and not in a good way.

The poll, conducted with NBC News, found that Americans care less about patriotism, family, and faith than they did 20 years ago. The percentage of Americans who regard family as very important dropped 16 points, to a mere 43 percent. The importance of religion dropped 12 points, to 48 percent; and patriotism fell 9 points, to 61 percent.

The trend was most pronounced among Millennials and older members of  Gen Z—or Zoomers, as they are sometimes known, who consistently rated these values lower than older Americans: 79 percent of Americans 55 and older valued patriotism, compared with 42 percent of younger Americans; nearly two-thirds of older Americans say they value religion highly, compared with less than one-third of younger Americans.

Taken together, the statistics tell a neat story of moral decline. So young people really are a bunch of godless egoists who think brunch and having pets instead of children is the summum bonum! It’s not quite wrong, but it isn’t quite fair, either.

Young people get a lot of grief from Boomers, but their confusion wasn’t formed in a vacuum. Sure, university, mass culture, and public schooling all have played a role in bringing about these changes, but Millennials are the products of the Boomers, the first true “Me Generation” in American history.

The shifts in core values reflect the ascendance of a culture of selfishness and mindless consumption, but that culture didn’t come from the Millennials or the Zoomers. Before today’s “Me Generation” came into being, there were the hedonist faux-ascetics of the 1960s who melted their brains with hallucinogens while dabbling in Eastern religions of self-denial to stick it to their uptight suburban parents.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion

My last report was from the county of Dorset in Britain.  Alas, the time my wife and I had in London came to an end in July.  Still, I will be following like a hawk all the minute manouverings around Brexit as Boris Johnson tries to stop Remainer Tory MPs from hijacking the referendum result and keep the UK in the European Union. Proroguing Parliament, as he has just done, would seem to indicate the new PM is to be taken at his word. If you want to see a perfect example of the elected MPs of a party becoming massively divorced from the core voters who put them in Parliament, you won’t get a better example than the foes who have been, if not foiled, at least muted.

It is estimated that some 70 to 75 per cent of Tory MPs voted ‘Remain’ while some 75 percent of Tory voters opted for ‘Leave’.  With Theresa May, also a Remainer, these Manchurian MPs had their perfect instrument.  Her basic negotiating tactic was to offer the EU nearly everything it wanted right at the start, and do so while promising over a hundred times that Britain would leave at the end of March, and that it would not be subject to the EU’s top court etc etc.  She broke virtually every single promise she made and I do not see how you can put a charitable spin on that — perfidy more than incompetence, in my view.  Only when the Tories slumped to eight per cent in the recent EU elections (which Britain should not have been participating in had Theresa May kept her word) did the party’s MPs realise they were writing the world’s slowest suicide note.  That, and Nigel Farage starting his new Brexit Party, which went from nothing to topping the polls in just seven weeks, forced these Conservative MPs to act.

Only when faced with extinction and the total decimation of their party did the Tories choose ‘Leave’ supporter Boris Johnson as leader and the new Prime Minister.  An analogy is Winston Churchill.  The Tories hated the man in the late 1930s.  They tried to deselect him.  Nothing other than the fact Hitler was rampaging through Europe would ever have seen this party – stacked full of wall-to-wall appeasers –  put him in Number 10.  Boris is no Winston.  But he’s almost as hated by the Remainer faction of his party.  And thus far, fingers crossed, he’s doing exactly what we Leavers need him to be doing.  Notice that some Tory MPs are seemingly prepared to put Jeremy Corbyn in as caretaker PM rather than leave the EU with No Deal.  They all need to be deselected, in my view, for their treachery against the party (look at what it promised at the last election) and against the referendum result.