RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/17/the-war-over

The summer season has ripped off the thin scab that covered an American wound, revealing a festering disagreement about the nature and origins of the United States.

The San Francisco Board of Education recently voted to paint over, and thus destroy, a 1,600-square-foot mural of George Washington’s life in San Francisco’s George Washington High School.

Victor Arnautoff, a communist Russian-American artist and Stanford University art professor, had painted “Life of Washington” in 1936, commissioned by the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration. A community task force appointed by the school district had recommended that the board address student and parent objections to the 83-year-old mural, which some viewed as racist for its depiction of black slaves and Native Americans.

Nike pitchman and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick recently objected to the company’s release of a special Fourth of July sneaker emblazoned with a 13-star Betsy Ross flag. The terrified Nike immediately pulled the shoe off the market.

The New York Times opinion team issued a Fourth of July video about “the myth of America as the greatest nation on earth.” The Times’ journalists conceded that the United States is “just OK.”

During a recent speech to students at a Minnesota high school, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) offered a scathing appraisal of her adopted country, which she depicted as a disappointment whose racism and inequality did not meet her expectations as an idealistic refugee. Omar’s family had fled worn-torn Somalia and spent four-years in a Kenyan refugee camp before reaching Minnesota, where Omar received a subsidized education and ended up a congresswoman.

https://spectator.us/white-supremacy-phantom/

Well la-dee-dah. The House votes to condemn ‘President Trump for his “racist comments” about four Democratic congresswomen of color.’

First, I am glad that ‘racist comments’ was in scare quotes. Why? Because there was nothing racist about the president’s tweets inviting creeps like Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar to leave the United States if she doesn’t like it here.  

Second, I wish people would give the phrase ‘people of color’ a rest. Everyone is a color — even, I suppose, Albinos (is that ‘racist’ now, too?). I, for example, am a pleasing pink. 

But the fact that someone is dark-skinned imparts to him no special virtue, just as the fact that someone is Caucasian saddles him with no special liability. 

Except, alas, that it does. At least in the racist court of identity politics. 

Please note the absence of scare quotes around ‘racist’ this time. It is one of the signal moral and intellectual deformations of our time that many people strain every action through the sieve of racial redress. The result is that a pretended campaign against racism is fueled by a thoroughly racist imperative. Remember that the next time someone condemns the phantom of ‘white supremacy.’ It is a category as vacuous as ‘counter-revolutionary’ for a paid-up Jacobin or ‘bourgeois capitalist’ for a Marxist. 

https://www.steynonline.com/9552/wokeness-at-warp-speed

A few months ago I observed to Tucker Carlson that the difference between “Bush Derangement Syndrome” and “Trump Derangement Syndrome” was that the former was largely contained to a visceral loathing for the President himself, whereas the latter has been extended to anyone who voted for him – ie, the half of the electorate comprised of “racists”, “fascists” and “white supremacists”. Now TDS rampages on, to consume half the Democrats, too.

Say what you like about Nancy Pelosi, but she took back the House by running the Dems as a “moderate” party that talked about things like voter concern over health care. A year on, and most of what the party’s presidential candidates are yakking about – busing, the needs of trans-African-Americans, open borders to all six-and-a-half billion Undocumented-Americans around the world – is bonkers. The Democrat platform is a twitchy reflex that, whatever Trump is for, they’re against. So he wakes up every morning, tweets his rubber hammer at their kneecaps, and they respond accordingly. He doesn’t even have to hold any particular position: The actual Trump is utterly indifferent on the matter of “gender fluidity” and, from his experience as a businessman in Canada and Scotland, is not ill-disposed toward socialized health care. But the Trump of their fevers is a transphobe who wants to shove granny off a cliff, and that’s who they’re running against.

So the party of Big Government will no longer cooperate with the biggest government of all. Behold Eric Garcetti, mayor of a city the middle class is fleeing, where less and less works, where traffic is at a standstill, and you can’t get out and walk because the sidewalks are full of tent cities, human feces and flesh-eating viruses. And his priority is non-cooperation with ICE. And notice his artful pitch: Democrats have long abolished the distinction between “immigrants” and the millions who just walked into the country, which is why the Mayor sells his position to “Angelenos” as simply that of being a “good neighbor”. Are Mexico and Guatemala “good neighbors” to the United States? Does a “good neighbor” just move into the house next door and then demand you support him in his lawlessness?

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/16/gop-look-like-peter-thiel-charge/

On July 14, the National Conservatism Conference started in Washington DC as the first public attempt to say what conservatism is after the Donald Trump election. It’s fitting that it’s organized by a new outfit, the Edmund Burke Foundation, created in January 2019 and chaired by Yoram Hazony, the scholar who became famous in 2018 for his book “The Virtue Of Nationalism,” and advised by Rusty Reno, editor of First Things and Chris DeMuth, the prominent conservative scholar of public policy (all three of whom are speakers at the conference).

A large number of other journalists, intellectuals, and scholars will give speeches—some famous, some not (here’s the list). The first striking thing is the absence of politicians speaking about the future of conservatism. Apparently, we are looking for ideas elsewhere, despite the GOP’s historic electoral victories in 2016. The exceptions are Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), recently famous for proposing a bill to use the federal government to enforce free speech requirements on social media corporations, and National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Redefining and Popularizing Conservatism

The conference is nevertheless emphatically political, aimed not merely at redefining conservatism, but at making the case that it is a preferable alternative to the liberalism prevailing in elite institutions in America. The speakers are aiming to popularize new ideas to inspire politicians and political organizations.

In short, they want a new GOP fit for the political world shaking up after the 2016 election. There is something admirable and even noble about this attempt, but we should also see what the new ideas are and where they tend.

To start with, let us talk about Peter Thiel’s keynote address, which circulated widely. Thiel rarely makes political statements, but he shocked everyone by supporting Trump in 2016 and giving a passionate speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC). Now, he’s doubling down on some of his most surprising, unconventional ideas, which finally have their chance to become part of a party platform.

Thiel took aim at the most prestigious liberal institutions in our times: Silicon Valley and academia. He claimed they are only good for elite liberals and have become bad for America as a whole and directly inimical to the conservative half of America.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/donald-trump-and-the-racist-tweets/

There’s a difference between racist and just stupid.

What does “racist” even mean anymore?

Racism is the headline on President Trump’s Sunday tweets — the media-Democrat complex assiduously describes them as “racist tweets” as if that were a fact rather than a trope. I don’t think they were racist; I think they were abjectly stupid.

Like many Americans, I am tired of being lectured about racism by racists and racialists, individuals whose full-field explanation for all life’s issues is this matter of genetic happenstance that should be increasingly irrelevant in a pluralistic society.

Is it “racist” to tell people who have contempt for the country — who abhor the common culture that makes us American — that they ought to go back to where they came from? It has nativist and reactionary overtones, but I don’t think it is racist. I’ll grant this much, though: It is closer to actual racism than the Left’s usual demagogic claim: I am a racist if I extend to a non-white nincompoop like Ilhan Omar the courtesy of taking her seriously as an individual and a public official, as if it were her race rather than the idiocy of what she says that moves me to dissent.

It would be racist to tell the progressive “Squad” that they don’t belong in our country because of their race or ethnic roots. I don’t understand Trump to have done that. He is attacking their radicalism, which they wear like a badge of honor.

I don’t believe Trump is a master strategist who did this to force Speaker Pelosi and other mainstream Democrats, at their electoral peril, to embrace the radicals. That’s just the lemonade that Trump supporters are trying to make of the president’s never-ending supply of lemons. In any event, while it is beneath a president to carp in Trump’s juvenile way, I have less heartburn in principle with a president’s attacking radicalism than I do with a congresswoman’s claim that any criticism of her is an implicit criticism of immigrants, women, black people, etc.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/16/trumps

When President Trump tweeted Sunday that “‘Progressive’ Democrat congresswomen” should “go back” to the countries they came from, the vapors swept through the political class and media. Granted, the tweet was crude. But the delivery should not invalidate the point.

Both parties condemned the tweet. And journalists, who can never find anything a Democrat says to even be mildly objectionable, or untrue, predictably responded as if Trump had hung a portrait of Hitler in the Oval Office, which is how they react nearly every time he opens his mouth or fires off a tweet. The backlash was more overheated than the tweet.

For the record, here’s the tweet in its entirety:

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274320/american-hating-americans-are-ultimate-ingrates-bruce-thornton

“As for Trump, once again he has said what many Americans think, but seldom hear from the Republican elite. And he has stood up for those same Americans who love their country, not because it’s perfect, not because they think its history is sinless, but because it has in word and deed shown itself to be the “last best hope” we fallen mortals have in a tragic world. And most of all, we love America because it is who we are, its ideals the unum that allows the pluribus to become a people yet keep its diversity. There’s not much more we can expect from imperfect human beings.”

With his usual flair for hyperbole and indifference to factual details, Donald Trump last week tweet-blasted the so-called “Squad” of female freshman Congressmen “of color” for slandering America as racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, and numerous other empty epithets. Though Trump was careless for suggesting, “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”––since only one, Ilhan Omar, was born abroad––his sentiment is still valid, and has been shared for decades by millions of Americans angry over their homeland being demonized by immigrants and fellow citizens alike.

This sentiment was memorably captured by country singer Merle Haggard in his hit “Fightin’ Side of Me.” Released in December 1969, the song expressed the anger of the “Silent Majority” that had just put Richard Nixon in the White House. And the lyrics identified who Americans were angry at: the free, comfortable New Leftists, college students, bougie hippies, and liberal elite fellow-travelers who burned the American Flag, slandered our soldiers as baby-killers, and called their country “AmeriKKKa.” Haggard especially targeted the antiwar activists who insulted our troops even as they were fighting and dying, and who “love our milk and honey” but “preach about some other way of livin’.” Sound familiar?

But it was one line in the chorus that summed up many Americans’ attitude: “If you don’t love it leave it.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/american-flag-men-died-for-it/

They risked everything for it, not for some idea or abstraction but for the piece of fabric itself.

The American flag’s place in our culture is beginning to look less unassailable.

The symbol itself is under attack, as we’ve seen with Nike dumping a shoe design featuring an early American flag, Megan Rapinoe defending her national-anthem protests (she says she will never sing the song again), and protesters storming an ICE facility in Aurora, Colo., and replacing the U.S. flag with a Mexican flag.

U.S. soccer had a pretty good statement a while back setting out, in response to Rapinoe, why it has an expectation that players will stand during the national anthem (which, of course, is all about the flag):

Representing your country is a privilege and honor for any player or coach that is associated with U.S. Soccer’s National Team. Therefore, our national anthem has particular significance for U.S. Soccer. In front of national and often global audiences, the playing of our national anthem is an opportunity for our Men’s and Women’s National Team players and coaches to reflect upon the liberties and freedom we all appreciate in this country.

(Rapinoe called the sentiment “cowardly.”)

The U.S. soccer statement could have added that men have fought for the flag, and not just in the sense of fighting under it as members of the U.S. armed services. Our troops have literally fought for the flag, for its physical advance and preservation. This is the story of color sergeants during the Civil War.

Color sergeants carried the flag —typically, both the U.S. flag and the regimental flag — into battle, and not a weapon. They depended for protection on the color guard, a small contingent of troops dedicated to the task. The flag, held aloft and leading the way, was important as a matter of tactics (to mark the location of the unit in the confusion of battle), of morale (to provide a rallying point for the troops), and of devotion and honor (to lose the flag to the enemy was a deep disgrace).

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jul/14/when-cultural-marxists-advance-their-agenda-everyo/

“It’s a new age, all right. One in which darkness poses as light, and light is suppressed by darkness, all in the name of tolerance.”

Tyranny can arrive fast in the form of tanks and jackboots. Or it can come gradually, snuffing out liberty and replacing it with fear.

The latter is what we’re facing today, as cultural Marxists advance their doctrines and silence any dissension.

Each day brings new examples, but here are a few that show why a sleeping church and any friend of liberty had better wake up before it’s too late.

Social media giants Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, Google’s YouTube and even Pinterest have all been caught censoring Christians and conservatives. Most of it is being done at the behest of LGBTQ activists.

If that particular issue is of no concern, consider the famous quote by once-Nazi supporter and then-foe Martin Niemoller. Various versions of the pastor’s statement have circulated, but here is the gist: “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.

This past week, we learned that Amazon.com has banned books by psychologist Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D., at the request of an LGBTQ activist who did not like Mr. Nicolosi’s theory of the origins of male homosexuality and his advocacy of reparative therapy to reduce such inclinations.

It’s part of a pattern. Last December, Amazon removed an app from Living Hope Ministries, which helps people who want to leave homosexuality. Amazon, however, has no problem carrying materials promoting every sort of sexual behavior no matter how unhealthy, even such odious practices as pedophilia (“Male Intergenerational Intimacy.”)

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/14/of-progressive-carnivores-and-cannibals/

The Obama-era Democratic Party bears little resemblance to the themes embraced just 11 years ago by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primaries.

The parameters of marriage, in Obama’s words “between a man and woman,” has now transmogrified beyond gay civil unions to legal gay marriage to transgendered fixations.

Obama once protested that he was no king who could open the border and grant amnesties by fiat. Yet his view of immigration has metamorphosed well beyond DACA and Dreamers into Democratic candidates going into Mexico to escort aliens unlawfully into our country, and 500 sanctuary jurisdictions in which federal immigration law is all but null and void. An American citizen convicted of using a fake Social Security Number and phony ID is a felon who is all but unemployable; an illegal alien who commits the same crimes learns quickly that these are not deportable offenses and mostly never prosecuted.

In a nanosecond, Betsy Ross’s iconic colonial flag, which once emblazoned the backdrop of the 2012 Obama inauguration ceremony, have become racist icons—or so Nike pitchman Colin Kaepernick has decreed, ordering his corporate bosses to remove them from commemorative sneakers.

Obamacare has abruptly morphed into “Medicare for All”—including illegal aliens who are to be eligible the moment they cross the border, despite never having paid a dime into the system.