RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/09/civility-is-wasted-on-the-left/

Like Jordan Peterson’s reputation, Lionel Shriver’s conservative credentials were burnished by leftist idiocy. In Peterson’s case it was his interview on the UK’s Channel 4 by Cathy Newman. In Shriver’s case it was Yassmin Abdel-Magied walking out of the Brisbane Writers’ Festival in 2016 in protest at Shriver’s views on identity politics and cultural appropriation.

Neither Peterson nor Shriver are my kind of conservatives and, to be fair, I am sure they would not claim to be or would want to be. That’s fine. What I would like to say is that conservative warriors are now needed more than ever. Much less useful are prominent notables on the conservative side who come over all reasonable in the face of those intent on our destruction.

Peterson lost his standing with me when he suggested that Brett Kavanagh should first win his confirmation to the Supreme Court but then immediately resign to clear his name. That was a ridiculous suggestion, to put it extremely mildly. Clearly Peterson has no idea about the enemy we face.

I caught Shriver on Q&A last week. True, I could only stand five minutes or so before turning it off. Any longer spent watching Q&A is injurious to my peace of mind. Nevertheless, I saw enough to sense that Shriver was trying hard to appear “reasonable” to other panellists and to the usual green-leftist ABC audience. Hint for Shriver: Prostration is pointless. They’ll always despise you. Look to, say, Michelle Malkin for a role model.

Did I get a false impression of Shriver’s demeanour? I think not. The following evening I attended the Bonython Lecture in Sydney, where she explained that her engagement, front and backstage, with other Q&A panellists was civil; and, furthermore, she made a point of extolling the need for civility generally in political debate.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

There is so much in today’s news that is both silly and dangerous. The anti-democratic crowd in Britain, like their brethren in the United States, chose not to accept the outcome of an election. The vote three years ago was definitive, with 52% of the electorate voting to leave the European Union. For those of you who speak and write of the closeness of the vote, yes it was. Nevertheless, it was the will of the people. In the same vein there has been a refusal by many on the left in the U.S. not to accept the outcome of our 2016 election. We have corporate leaders who feel it is more important to be “woke” than to accept the reality that a corporation’s most important goal must be profitability. If a business is not profitable, employees, the community, suppliers and customers will not benefit. It seems the entire field of Democrats who would be President have chosen to end fracking and exit the fossil fuel industry – including natural gas, the commodity that has allowed us to come closer to global emission standards than any other industrial nation – and move quickly to renewables like wind and solar, no matter the costs or the effect on the environment. We have big-city politicians – the most prominent example being New York City – who would dumb-down public education to the lowest common denominator, in the name of equality. They would do so to the detriment of minorities and the impoverished, while sending their own children to private institutions.

The common thread running through all these tantrums posing as policies is hypocrisy. It is enough to make an old man wince. But, enough, on to the main message:

Slavery is barbaric, but to argue that it was the “foundation” on which our country was built is hyperbole and disingenuous. In 1619, Virginia was a colony of Britain. It would be 157 years before the American colonies revolted, and they did so to be free and independent. In that year 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” words, as we know, that did not capture the truth of slavery, but which suggested a road map for the banning of international slave trade, which was done in 1808; the freeing of slaves in 1863 under the Proclamation Emancipation, and for the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 and 1965. One might argue that 188 years is too long, but keep in mind slavery has been in existence since before written history. Also, remember, in 1776 slavery existed in all thirteen colonies and throughout Europe. And it persists today, enslaving forty million people, particularly in Asia, Africa and Central Asia.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/09/the-downside-of-prosperity-madness-made-affordable/

No other system on Earth has created greater wealth for more people, and lifted more out of poverty than free market capitalism. But it has also brought a drawback we have to live with: plenty of idle time and available resources to feed foolish and too-often destructive activities.

When overcoming economic struggles is a family’s and an individual’s primary, and sometimes sole, focus of life, there’s not enough time and money left over to engage in ill-natured behavior, such as ignorantly and maliciously protesting, and harassing customers, at a Chick-fil-A grand opening in Toronto. All energy is directed toward daily survival. Putting food on the table and maintaining a roof above don’t leave many hours to participate in futile and stupid gestures, to borrow a phrase from one of Hollywood’s greatest movies. Productive adults, especially those who are depended upon by others, and even responsible teens, have far better things to do than to act like spoiled children, and worse.

But today, most in the West live in a society whose members are not only the richest in history, they have a bounty of leisure time that no other has even been able to comprehend.

William Ayers was among the first to exploit these conditions. His father Thomas G. Ayers was a president, chairman, and CEO of Commonwealth Edison in the 1960s and 1970s. The elder Ayers also served on a number of corporate and nonprofit boards, was a Northwest University trustee, and was known for his civic leadership and generosity.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-9-7-add-rent-control-to-the-list-of-progressive-policies-that-increase-income-inequality

The list of progressive policy proposals supposedly designed to increase fairness and justice in the world just keeps getting longer and longer. Medicare for all. Free college. Higher minimum wages. Every kind of “climate justice” prescription. Reparations for slavery. And here’s one that seemed to have faded away in disgrace decades ago, but now is making a revival: rent control. Rent control is currently getting expanded and strengthened in numerous progressive jurisdictions, from New York to California, with new proposals now on the table in places like Minnesota and Illinois.

A recurring topic in this blog has been the extent to which progressive policies reduce — or instead, actually increase — income inequality. You will not be surprised to hear that there is a very close relationship between jurisdictions with more progressive and redistributive policies and higher income inequality. In an article I wrote in the City Journal in 2015 I pointed out the close relationship:

[In 2014] Bloomberg Rankings published a national study on income inequality, using U.S. Census Bureau income data to rank each of the 435 congressional districts by economists’ standard measure of inequality, the Gini coefficient. The study found high levels of income inequality in areas of the country known for their political progressivism. Topping the inequality list was New York’s tenth congressional district, which covers the West Side of Manhattan and Wall Street—including City Hall. Of the top 25 spots, 23 went to Democratic districts—and not just any Democratic districts. The five congressional districts covering some part of Manhattan earned the first, sixth, ninth, 13th, and 20th positions. Congressional districts in solidly liberal Chicago, Cambridge, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Berkeley placed in the Top 25. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district ranked 14th on the list . . . .

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/06/the-dystopian-democrats-authoritarian-town-hall/

Who would imagine that the Democrats’ hurtling to the far left would actually lead to an attack on one of their sacred precepts: “a woman’s right to choose.”

The right to choose not to have a baby is fine, reducing as it does your carbon footprint, and thus saving the earth. But choosing to have too many babies (on top of being so bourgeois and unseemly) is like selfishly choosing to burn oil instead of harnessing your energy from the sun or wind.

Get it straight: carbon is immoral, whether the polluting carbon you’re expelling into the atmosphere is fossil fuels or children.

At CNN’s “Climate Crisis Town Hall” on Wednesday, working class champion Sen. Bernie Sanders was asked a population control question by a longtime elementary teacher at a Montessori school where the tuition ranges from $11,000 to $27,000, in 96% white, $66,500 median family income Litchfield County in rural western Connecticut, the state’s most sparsely populated county.

“The planet cannot sustain this growth” in population, she contended. “Empowering women and educating everyone on the need to curb population growth seems a reasonable campaign to enact. Would you be courageous enough to discuss this issue and make it a key feature of a plan to address climate catastrophe?” she asked. Sanders responded in the positive and expressed a willingness to give U.S. “aid to those organizations around the world that allow women to have abortions” and provide contraception.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/06/americans-wanted-freedom-much-hong-kongers/

As I watch the fearless Hong Kong protesters risk life and limb, standing up to the Chinese juggernaut to protect freedom, I can’t help but wistfully wish we’re witnessing the beginning of a spreading popular movement. In my heart of hearts, it’s my fondest hope that these courageous, freedom-loving protesters succeed and that their message of hope catches fire in other countries in desperate need of the Hong Kong formula.

I’m not referring to a spread into mainland China, which would also be wonderful. No, here I’m hoping their thirst for freedom also spreads to the United States.

I’m not saying the United States isn’t free. But it’s a whole lot less free than the special experiment of Hong Kong. For one thing, the Heritage Foundation rates Hong Kong’s as the freest economy in the world, and the United States as the world’s 12th-freest. That’s embarrassing.

Hong Kong is a miracle economy. Its unemployment rate rarely rises above 4 percent. It recovered quickly from the financial crisis in contrast to the very lethargic U.S. recovery between 2008 and 2017. Hong Kong has avoided the curse of a large entitlement system due to its free market policies. It maintains a “simple and efficient” tax rate of 15 percent, from which it drives an astonishing budget surplus, averaging 3.4 percent. Its debt is equivalent to 0.1 percent of GDP.

Leftist orthodoxy would hold that the absence of a robust social safety net would result in widespread human suffering. But the opposite is true. Hong Kong, a city of comparable size to New York City, has a tiny homeless population of approximately 1,000, as opposed to New York, where nearly one of every 121 New Yorkers is currently homeless. Hong Kong’s poverty rate of 14.7 percent is among the lowest in the world.

In spite of a comparatively hands-off regulatory environment, market efficiencies make Hong Kong’s carbon footprint per citizen less than green-obsessed Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg, to name a few examples. Indeed, its carbon footprint per citizen is only two-thirds of Norway’s (6.4 metric tons per capita versus 9.3) and less than half of Canada’s (15.2 metric tons). If the left really cared about the environment, it shouldn’t abandon the profit motive’s efficient resource management that has proven to be a more effective pollution reducer than central control.

amgreatness.com/2019/09/04/antifa-gives-progressives-a-tin-pot-dictator-high/

What are you supposed to do if a mob attacks you? If you have reason to believe that the mob intends to hurt you or could kill you, do you have the right to defend yourself with deadly force? Do you even have the right to say you would? Given proper policing, such questions should not even arise. But if they do, the First and Second Amendments should answer them. Increasingly, that is no longer the case.

Antifa, short for the German word antifashistisch, is a congerie of anarchists, socialists, Communists, liberals, and social democrats who disrupt, break, beat, and make it physically impossible for those whom they deem fascists, capitalists, white supremacists, etc. to carry on their activities. Antifa’s slogan is “abolish capitalism, antifascist action, smash fascism.” Their members dress in black, wear masks, and fight under black and red banners. Footage of their violence is readily available online.

In recent years, similarly violent groups have “occupied” Wall Street, shut down freeways in Chicago and Oakland, California, disrupted Trump’s campaign rallies, trashed Washington, D.C. during the 2017 presidential inaugural, and chased conservative speakers from college campuses.

The most interesting thing about this left-wing violence is that it happens almost exclusively in places where the police power is in the hands of progressives—whether mayors or university administrators—whose police stand aside as the violent ones do their work, and who have not prosecuted them. Moreover, since the persons whom these groups attack physically are the very ones whom the media and the Democratic Party attack verbally, it is not surprising that the media tries to put the best face on the violence.

Hence it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the violent groups merely do the dirty work of progressives—indeed that violence in society is essential to progressives’ quest for power. The progressive powers’ constraint of the victims’ right to self-defense caps the conclusion.

Antifa is not a problem in and of itself, any more than any mob would be. Where they lack officials’ protection, Antifa’s numbers and their capacity for mayhem are no match for ordinary police forces—nor for armed citizens.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/socialism-is-for-the-incurious-11567460002

I was struck by a news report this summer about Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. It has long been known that he and his wife chose to spend their honeymoon in the Soviet Union. But it was news that he never availed himself of the opportunity to visit Alexander Solzhenitsyn when the great writer and moral witness was living as a refugee in Cavendish, Vt., between 1976 and his death in 2008.

Some comments about that story attribute Mr. Sanders’s negligence to ideology, as if he, being a fan of the Soviet Union, made a silent protest by ignoring the famous anti-Soviet figure in his midst. But I think the deeper reason for his neglect was a quality of the socialist or communist or revolutionary sensibility that is too little remarked. I mean its ingrained, indeed its programmatic, lack of curiosity about other people.

The philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, in a thoughtful anatomy of the French Revolution, is one of the few people to underscore this feature of the totalitarian habit of mind. “This absence of curiosity,” Mr. Scruton notes, “is a permanent characteristic of the revolutionary consciousness.”

An important reason for this lack of curiosity is the prominent role that abstractions play in the mental and moral metabolism of the totalitarian sensibility. This feature was articulated with some poignancy by Rousseau, who, at the end of his life, sadly observed: “I think I know man, but as for men, I know them not.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274819/progressives-cynical-exploitation-mass-shootings-bruce-thornton

The second multiple-victim shooting in Texas in a week brought out the usual clichés and useless policy prescriptions from the progressive media and Democrats running in the presidential primary. And also as usual, the protestations of being “heartbroken,” and the demands for banning and confiscating certain weapons, are rote responses that apart from having little material value, display a cynical exploitation of suffering for political gain.

One wonders, for example, why all this “heartbreak” and “thoughts”––“prayers” are now verboten for progressives––are never publicized about the lethal violence in Chicago, Baltimore, and other blue-state fiefs. Fifty-three people died in August from mass shootings, an unusually high amount. The August toll in the Windy City was 46 murdered––almost a quarter fewer than last year. And these sorts of numbers happen every month of the year in Chicago totaling 539 dead in 2018. But do we hear politicians preening their “heartbreak” over these deaths? Are not those lives as precious as those of mass shooting victims? Aren’t those families of the victims just as devastated?

Most of the victims in Chicago and Baltimore are black, as are most of the murderers. I guess “black lives matter” only when the police are involved, or the perpetrator isn’t black. Black-on-black crime doesn’t fit the narrative of “racism,” “white privilege,” or “white supremacism”––unless one wants to depict blacks as helpless victims of “racism,” powerless to control their behavior. By the way, that claim has been an argument for slavery and segregation going all the way back to Aristotle. And just who created the character-degrading, family-destroying, federally subsidized blue-city hell-holes that comprise the “environment” manipulating black people into crime? No wonder race-industry progressives don’t want to call attention to these grisly facts.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/are_american_voters_helpless.html

America the land of the free, is under assault by the deadly ideology of Islamic subversion.

There is not a day that goes by that I read comments from all over the social media on major issues that threaten this land of the free. Many Americans know what the problems are, but they are helpless in solving them alone. Why? Because we are a representative republic and expect our elected representatives to know the problems and solve them. Americans love courageous leaders like President Trump and Senator Ted Cruz and despise weak politicians whose only art is playing with nonsocial words.

When was the last time you witnessed a courageous and knowledgeable representative stand up in the U.S. Congress to address the vital issue of Islam’s stealth jihad or Islamic subversion currently exploiting all aspects of American life? I do not remember.

Well, let’s ask a few questions. Aren’t these people elected to keep America safe? Don’t these elected officials work for their constituents? Haven’t they sworn that they “will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and that they “will bear true faith and allegiance to the same?”