RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/opinion/jewish-culture-genius-iq.html

An eminent Lithuanian rabbi is annoyed that his yeshiva students devote their lunch breaks to playing soccer instead of discussing Torah. The students, intent on convincing their rav of the game’s beauty, invite him to watch a professional match. At halftime, they ask what he thinks.

“I have solved your problem,” the rabbi says.

“How?”

“Give one ball to each side, and they will have nothing to fight over.”

I have this (apocryphal) anecdote from Norman Lebrecht’s new book, “Genius & Anxiety,” an erudite and delightful study of the intellectual achievements and nerve-wracked lives of Jewish thinkers, artists, and entrepreneurs between 1847 and 1947. Sarah Bernhardt and Franz Kafka; Albert Einstein and Rosalind Franklin; Benjamin Disraeli and (sigh) Karl Marx — how is it that a people who never amounted even to one-third of 1 percent of the world’s population contributed so seminally to so many of its most pathbreaking ideas and innovations?

The common answer is that Jews are, or tend to be, smart. When it comes to Ashkenazi Jews, it’s true. “Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average I.Q. of any ethnic group for which there are reliable data,” noted one 2005 paper. “During the 20th century, they made up about 3 percent of the U.S. population but won 27 percent of the U.S. Nobel science prizes and 25 percent of the ACM Turing awards. They account for more than half of world chess champions.”

But the “Jews are smart” explanation obscures more than it illuminates. Aside from the perennial nature-or-nurture question of why so many Ashkenazi Jews have higher I.Q.s, there is the more difficult question of why that intelligence was so often matched by such bracing originality and high-minded purpose. One can apply a prodigious intellect in the service of prosaic things — formulating a war plan, for instance, or constructing a ship. One can also apply brilliance in the service of a mistake or a crime, like managing a planned economy or robbing a bank.

But as the story of the Lithuanian rabbi suggests, Jewish genius operates differently. It is prone to question the premise and rethink the concept; to ask why (or why not?) as often as how; to see the absurd in the mundane and the sublime in the absurd. Ashkenazi Jews might have a marginal advantage over their gentile peers when it comes to thinking better. Where their advantage more often lies is in thinking different.

Where do these habits of mind come from?

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-populist-decade/

History doesn’t follow a schedule. The events that define an era often happen before or after the onset of a new decade. It’s been said that the Sixties didn’t begin on January 1, 1960, but on November 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. They didn’t end on January 1, 1970, but on August 9, 1974, when Richard Nixon resigned as president.

Keep this in mind as you look at retrospectives of the 2010s. The calendar decade may be drawing to a close, but the tendencies, ideas, movements, sentiments, and personalities associated with the past 10 years may not be quite ready to leave the stage. The underlying causes of national populism have not disappeared. Our times continue to be shaped by immigration, terrorism, and the cultural distance between voters without college degrees and the credentialed elites who govern them. It would be a mistake to follow the advice of the Bloomberg editor who wrote in a recent headline, “Populism Will Probably Just Go Away Soon, So Relax.” On the contrary: The populist epoch may be only beginning.

To say that the ’10s began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, doesn’t tell the whole story. The first shoots of national populism were visible by the time of the Wall Street panic. In 2005, the Dutch and French both voted against a proposed European Constitution in an expression of discontent with the EU. In 2006, massive rallies of immigrants to the United States, some waving the flags of their countries of origin, sparked a backlash against proposed immigration reform. That was also the year that Congress, against the wishes of the Bush administration, blocked a proposal to transfer management of six American ports to a company in Dubai. And on August 29, 2008, John McCain announced that Sarah Palin would be his running mate.

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/67587-socialisms-cyclical-appeal-2019-12-26

Like swallows returning to Capistrano, socialism makes an appearance on a regular cycle.

The current presidential campaign features self-confessed socialist Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who doesn’t self-describe as a socialist, but whose policies closely resemble those of Sanders.

Sanders has the luxury of condemning millionaires and billionaires from his comfortable life as a multi-millionaire. As Forbes magazine has reported, “Sanders … has amassed an estimated $2.5 million fortune from real estate, investments, government pensions — and earnings from three books.” Sanders is also quoted, “I wrote a bestselling book. If you write a bestselling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”

Sanders appears to favor capitalism for himself, but he’s against it for everyone else.

Socialism is a false doctrine. It sells itself to new generations who know little about it. They promote it by promising “free stuff,” along with envy of the successful.

Why does socialism continue to have appeal in America? Part of the reason is adherents claim it is fairer than capitalism. It isn’t fair, socialists say, that some people make more money than others.

Socialism and its twin sister liberalism have always been about feelings, rather than outcome. That so many liberal programs have failed to achieve stated objectives does not matter to the left. Apparently, it is intent, not success, that counts. When liberals or socialists fail, they simply go on to new errors.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/give-dont-govern/

Big hearts are a good thing. Big government is no substitute for them.

This week, children may learn about that greedy man, Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge is selfish until ghosts scare him into thinking about others’ well-being, not just his own.

Good for the ghosts.

But the way Scrooge addresses others’ needs matters.

Today’s advocates of equality, compassion, increased spending on education, health care, etc., say “we care” but demand that government do the work.

Controlling other people with the power of government doesn’t prove you care.

If you want to help the poor, clean the environment, improve the arts. Great! Please do.

But if you are compassionate, then you’ll spend your own money on your vision. You will volunteer your work and encourage others to volunteer theirs, by charity or commerce. You don’t force others to do what you think is best.

But government is not voluntary.

Government has no money of its own. Whatever it gives away, it first must take from others through taxes.

If you vote for redistribution of wealth, welfare benefits, new Medicare spending or free education, you can tell yourself you’re “generous.”

John Dingell called Donald Trump an “imbecil” but when he died President Trump lowered the American flag in his honor. The widow Dingell responded by voting for impeachment. The President mused that the late Senator might be in hell and even Republicans gripped their corsets and denounced him.

Please read these two columns on John Dingell’s “legacy.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/dingell_and_civility_in_politics.html

Dingell and civility in politics By Matthew May

John Dingell probably would have laughed at President Donald Trump’s allusion that Dingell was perhaps “looking up” at the political scene. It is no exaggeration to say that of all of the politicians on the scene since 1955 (Dingell’s first year in the House of Representatives), nobody knew better than he that politics ain’t beanbag. Crude jokes and allusions are part of the game. 

During one of my two stints as an intern in his offices, Dingell would often jovially announce that he was stopping into the bathroom by saying “Time to salute the president” (who happened to be Bill Clinton at the time). He was not above telling what he thought were amusing stories about Ronald Reagan’s forgetfulness at the 40th president’s expense.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/hellish-legacy-dingell-family-daniel-greenfield/

The Hellish Legacy of the Dingell Family If you’re going to drain the swamp, you’ve gotta call it out. Daniel Greenfield.

A decade ago, Time Magazine unveiled an in-depth article on the death of Detroit. One of the politicians whom the article blamed for Detroit’s woes was Rep. John Dingell.The Dingell clan has held a congressional seat outside Detroit since 1932. Their 87-year tenure has not coincidentally coincided with the decline of a thriving industrial city into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/22/the-era-of-good-fascism/

If and when fascism comes to America, it will not arrive with jackboots, stiff arms, and military uniforms. To modern progressives, laws are fluid, to be enforced when they champion the “good,” to be ignored or subverted when they empower the “bad.”

Consider the recent statements and acts of iconic progressive celebrities.

Jane Fonda is chronically furious. This time she directed her wrath at those who disagree about the urgency of ending the entire fossil fuel industry and ruining the current economy. Her idea is to put climate “deniers” on trial for incorrect speech. So much for the First Amendment. “Now, because of the fossil fuel industry, it’s too late for moderation,” Fonda says. “And given the emergency, it’s those who believe in moderation, in pre-Trump business as usual, who are truly delusional. And those who lie and continue to lie about what they’re doing to the environment should be put on trial.”

Green teenage heartthrob Greta Thunberg has a different solution for those who disagree with her orthodox view on “climate change”: “World leaders are still trying to run away from their responsibilities, but we have to make sure they cannot do that. We will make sure that we put them against the wall, and they will have to do their job to protect our futures.”

If Thunberg is truly worried about past government decisions that have threatened the world, she might study Swedish history and ask why her forefathers sold iron ore to the Nazi war machine—without which it could not have waged the war it did—and often threw in Swedish transport in the bargain.

https://www.city-journal.org/democrats-identity-politics

“It’s not the first time, and probably won’t be the last, that the Democratic political class has failed to heed the message that those who live by identity politics often die by identity politics.”

The top Democratic candidates will soon take the stage at the next debate, and oh boy, are party leaders squirming. Up until late last week, when Andrew Yang made the cutoff by a hair, all six of those making their pitch were white—#debatesowhite, as the hashtag called it. Worse yet, half of those Caucasians are old enough to be carrying Medicare cards. As Frank Bruni wrote in last week’s Sunday column, “for a party that celebrates diversity, pitches itself to underdogs and prides itself on being future-minded and youth-oriented, that’s a freaky, baffling turn of events.”

Some blamed the freaky turn on billionaire money crowding out the merely rich little guys, while others pointed a finger at the DNC for a dysfunctional qualifying system and a primary calendar privileging Iowa and New Hampshire, both largely white states. Also popular is the theory of “electability”—if voters’ top priority is nominating someone who can beat Donald Trump, white old-timers seem like the safest bet. But the facts behind #debatesowhite suggest that, despite the best efforts of progressives and the party establishment to hype 2020 candidates in terms of their race, gender, and LGBTQ status, the Democratic rank-and-file have limited use for identity politics.

Remember that the Dems started the year with a historically diverse field: two blacks, an Asian, a Hispanic, and an out gay man. In the following months, a sizable cluster of women joined the fray. Finally, Americans would see a field that “looked like America.” Yet 12 months later, all the nonwhite candidates—except Yang, who has explicitly disavowed identity politics—are either going or gone. Even Kamala Harris, whose Jamaican father and Indian mother made her intersectionally intersectional—black, Asian, female, and immigrant to boot—will not be standing in front of a podium.

In impeachment vote, how Republicans got to zero by Byron York

After rushed and intense proceedings into the Ukraine affair, the House has voted to impeach President Trump. The vote was 230 to 197 for the first article of impeachment charging the president with abuse of power and 229 to 198 for the second article charging him with obstruction of Congress.

For Republicans, the important numbers were zero and zero. Not a single Republican lawmaker voted for either article of impeachment. 

And indeed there were none. 

By Byron York

The Republican stance didn’t just happen. Scalise has been working for weeks to keep House Republicans up to speed on the rapidly changing issues and positions in the Democratic impeachment drive. It was essential to keeping GOP lawmakers together.

Remember that in the early days, most members of the House were in the dark about what was happening in the proceedings. Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff held depositions in secret, in a secure room in the Capitol, and only members of the Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs committees were allowed to attend. Together, that is only 47 Republicans out of 197 GOP members of the House. A total of 150 Republicans had no access to anything.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/18/the-deep-state-will-challenge-the-new-fda-head/

If we are to realize the kind of aggressive, innovation-promoting deregulation called for by President Trump, Stephen Hahn will need to disrupt the agency’s built-in bias for overregulation.

Now that the Trump Administration’s new FDA commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, has been confirmed, he’ll find he has one of the most difficult and important jobs in government. The FDA’s purview is wide, regulating pharmaceutical and other medical, food, and vaping products that account for more than 25 cents of every consumer dollar, over a trillion dollars annually.

Government regulation offers some reassurance to the public, to be sure, but when it is wrong-headed or merely fails to be cost-effective, it actually costs lives—directly by withholding life-saving and life-enhancing products, and also indirectly by diverting societal resources to gratuitous regulatory compliance.

Dr. Hahn is inheriting an organization that is huge, critical, and dysfunctional. The stakes are high. For example, FDA has pushed the average cost (including out-of-pocket expenses and opportunity costs) to bring a new drug to market to over $2.5 billion. That ensures that many new drugs will have a hefty price tag, and that others will never be developed at all.

Putting FDA on the right track will require toughness and discipline at an agency where more than 99.9 percent of the employees are civil servants who cannot be fired even for incompetence or insubordination. (Did we hear someone mutter, “deep state?”)

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/
In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (“I’m Partial to Impartiality,” December 12, 2019) Joseph Epstein wrote, “I happen to be someone who, in politics, yearns for impartiality.” I suspect that that desire for impartiality is common to most Americans – in the current environment, it “is a consummation devoutly to be wished,” as Hamlet would say. Most recognize we live in a pluralistic society, comprised of people from every nation on earth, representing all religions and races. In our homes, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates, we speak 350 languages. Nevertheless, we have in common a love of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We favor a middle road, which accommodates all travelers. But, in recent times, with our biases, real and imagined, we struggle for a common purpose and a common morality. Where I disagree with Mr. Epstein, whose mind and writing style I admire and envy, is that he puts principal blame on Donald Trump for the discord that has disrupted our lives. I would certainly agree that Mr. Trump has accentuated the divide, but real blame is more widely distributed.

Politicians have compartmentalized the electorate – youth versus age, urban versus rural, rich versus poor, people of color versus Caucasians, immigrants versus nativists, gays versus straight, globalists versus nationalists. As well, there are those in the industrialized (and former industrialized) parts of the Country who have seen coastal elites become wealthy, while their incomes have fallen or grown stagnant. There are a few immigrants who have chosen not to adapt to the culture of their adopted country, and there are people who have been here for generations who fear a breakdown in the social unity they have enjoyed. A culture of victimization, identity politics and moral relativism accentuates these divides. There are secularized elites on the coasts who cannot understand why folk in rural areas cling to religion and guns. There are those who have hated Mr. Trump from when he first ran for the Presidency, people who will do anything to remove him from office. (Last week, Nancy Pelosi, in a slip-of-the-tongue, said she had been working on impeachment for two-and-a-half years. Yet, hypocritically, she claims it is with great sadness she has advanced articles of impeachment.) And, of course, social media allows factions to gather in greater numbers, with more intense focus. And there are those like me who fear that the decades-long tilt in Washington toward statism, with the acquiescence of mainstream media, risks the fundamentals of personal liberty and economic liberty on which this nation was founded. In good conscience, I cannot remain silent.