RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/12/why-are-the-western-middle-classes-so-angry/

What is going on with the unending Brexit drama, the aftershocks of Donald Trump’s election and the “yellow vests” protests in France? What drives the growing estrangement of southern and eastern Europe from the European Union establishment? What fuels the anti-EU themes of recent European elections and the stunning recent Australian re-election of conservatives?

Put simply, the middle classes are revolting against Western managerial elites. The latter group includes professional politicians, entrenched bureaucrats, condescending academics, corporate phonies and propagandistic journalists.

What are the popular gripes against them?

One, illegal immigration and open borders have led to chaos. Lax immigration policies have taxed social services and fueled multicultural identity politics, often to the benefit of boutique leftist political agendas.

Two, globalization enriched the cosmopolitan elites who found worldwide markets for their various services. New global markets and commerce meant Western nations outsourced, offshored and ignored their own industries and manufacturing (or anything dependent on muscular labor that could be replaced by cheaper workers abroad).

Three, unelected bureaucrats multiplied and vastly increased their power over private citizens. The targeted middle classes lacked the resources to fight back against the royal armies of tenured regulators, planners, auditors, inspectors and adjustors who could not be fired and were never accountable.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/06/13/trump-saves-us-from-prince-charles

At roughly the same time one Republican said he was thinking about co-sponsoring a carbon tax bill, another was tacitly telling Prince Charles to buzz off with his crackpot global warming theories.

Thankfully, the latter is president and can veto lousy legislation as well as withdraw from counterproductive international climate pacts.

Some Republicans in Congress, prominent among them Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, are warming (yes, warming) to the idea of enacting a carbon tax to do Al Gore’s work, which is “fighting” a windmill called “climate change.”

E&E news reports Romney is “considering co-sponsoring a carbon tax bill amid shifting attitudes in the GOP and increasingly strong advocacy for carbon pricing programs in corporate America.” The Wall Street Journal says “some Republican lawmakers” are breaking with their “party on climate change.” These congressmen “favor market-based solutions over government regulations.”

“Solutions” implies that there’s a problem. Can these GOP lawmakers clearly identify the problem? Where’s the evidence that human-produced carbon dioxide emissions are warming Earth? With what degree of certainty can any politician, scientist, or activist say that man is causing the climate to change in ways that threaten him? 100%? No one can say this. 75%? No serious person would make such a claim. 50%? A 50-50 chance simply isn’t worth the known costs of carbon taxes and other mitigation proposals (Green New Deal, for instance). 25%? No serious person should consider such low odds to be grounds for making significant policy changes — the unknown is too great.

Despite the 1994 revolution, the Tea Party protests, and the 2010 midterm turnaround, it seems little has changed in the GOP. It’s easily bullied by a hostile, agenda-driven media, and would rather incrementally surrender to Democrats’ big-government urges than put up a fight on principle.

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22807/the-humanitarian-hoax-of-black-only-college

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com http://lindagoudsmit.com

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

The humanitarian hoax of black-only college graduation ceremonies is a classic example of destruction disguised as altruism. Let’s examine how resegregation has become fashionable.

Martin Luther King Jr. was the icon of the civil rights movement in the United States from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Dr. King advocated nonviolence and civil disobedience similar to Gandi’s nonviolent activism. At the legendary 1963 March on Washington Dr. King delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech which exhorted Americans to judge each other by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. His impassioned speech facilitated the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

The Civil Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, is considered the most comprehensive civil rights legislation since Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery in 1865. What happened?

The 13th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act were legislative remedies designed to achieve the Constitutional principle that all men are created equal. Black Americans, white Americans, brown Americans, red Americans, and yellow Americans – one united American family indivisible by color. Being American is the foundation and common denominator of equality.

In a shocking 5.16.19 article written by Drew Van Voorhis, he reports the findings of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) study of Neo-Segregation, the voluntary racial segregation of students. WHAT??

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Throughout most of the long history of man, the purpose of a life was simply to survive and procreate. Governments were formed as people began to live in communities. Republics and democracies were improvements on what had come before. Both have as their basis “people.” The word “republic” is derived from the Latin phrase “res publica,” the people’s concern. The word “democracy” stems from two Greek words, “demos,” meaning the people and “kratia,” meaning power or rule. Both are defined as forms of government in which ultimate power is invested in the people through a government run by their elected representatives, chosen either directly or indirectly. Both are in contrast to what had been the norm for most people over the millennia – large numbers controlled or enslaved by monarchial governments, which could be benevolent but more often were malevolent and autocratic.

But there are differences between republics and democracies. The latter implies rule by a simple majority, so that minority rights may be abridged, or over-ruled, by majority vote, whereas a republic relies on a written constitution that protects the natural rights of its citizens, including the rights of minorities. While autocracies are tyrannies by a minority, democracies devolve into a tyranny of the majority. Republics are less efficient, which can lead to frustration. If division is broad, the consequence can be the birth of multiple parties, followed by anarchy. Republics, better than democracies, protect the rights of all citizens. Apart from small towns, democracies have never lasted. The first known democracy was developed by Athenians and lasted from about 500 BC to circa 300 BC.  Their history was known to the Founders. In an 1814 letter to John Taylor, John Adams wrote: “Remember, democracies never last long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” Alexander Hamilton wrote, “Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.” Our Founders created a Republic, as the apocryphal story of Benjamin Franklin attests, with its purpose of providing, as our Declaration of Independence reads, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/06/commissars-at-the-end-of-history/

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019

Who won the Cold War? asked Daryl McCann in a recent issue of Quadrant. At first sight, this is an absurd question: of course America and its allies won. After all, it was the Soviet empire that folded, and for a time—a very short time, admittedly—it seemed as if large-scale geopolitical conflicts were a thing of the past. Francis Fukuyama suggested that history had come to a full stop. He had seen the future and it was universal liberal democracy; any little local resistance was futile and would quickly be overcome. To try to stop its spread would be like trying to plug a volcano in mid-eruption.

We now know different, if ever we gave credence to Fukuyama’s very dilute Hegelianism (I did not).  Interestingly, the reading of a book by John Laffin, an Australian writer on military subjects, published in 1979 in a popular, sensationalist style under the prophetic title The Dagger of Islam, might have sufficed by itself to warn us against all complacency in however sophisticated a form, and that ideology was far from dead albeit that its Marxist incarnation, or one of its Marxist incarnations, had so obviously failed even according to the most Machiavellian of criteria. 

Nevertheless, no one could seriously claim that the Soviet Union other than lost the Cold War, or that its leaders at any time in its history would have welcomed the denouement of that conflict. It was a victory for freedom over tyranny, indeed one of the most complete forms of tyranny known to human history.

And yet I suspect that few people would subscribe wholeheartedly to the proposition that, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, liberty has progressed from triumph to triumph in the world, even—or perhaps especially—in the lands of the victors of the Cold War. The fact is that for people to feel free, more is required than a political system with certain legal or constitutional guarantees, all of which can be subverted by the kind of rationalisation to which intellectuals are often given, and the absence of overt or obvious tyranny.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/bill-clinton-impeachment-case-stronge

The anti-Clinton case then was stronger than the anti-Trump case is now.

There’s been a cottage industry in accusing Republicans of impeachment hypocrisy.

They happily impeached Bill Clinton and now vociferously oppose the impeachment of Donald Trump, even though Clinton was accused of obstruction of justice — just as Trump is now.

Is this a legitimate point?

There are uncomfortable parallels. The Democrats most fervent about impeachment say that it is their duty to do it no matter what, politics be damned. They speculate that perhaps the polling on impeachment will improve once it’s under way. Republicans said the same thing in the 1990s, and the Clinton impeachment ended in a fizzle.

And it’s certainly true that both Clinton and Trump behaved appallingly when under investigation.

Given that the Clinton impeachment, as a practical matter, acted as a censure vote and Clinton’s misconduct didn’t involve his core presidential duties, there’s a good argument that a formal censure would have been the wiser course. In retrospect, Newt Gingrich doesn’t give himself high marks for how he handled it.

That said, the case for Clinton’s impeachment was still stronger than the case for Trump’s.

https://www.city-journal.org/diversity-training

Diversity training has become a standard feature of American corporate culture. Its origins date to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which codified protecting employees against discrimination and resulted in numerous lawsuits filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency created by the statute. In response, CEOs began holding diversity and inclusion classes and companies began to see such training as critical to good business—both as a defensive measure against liability and to foster a healthy and respectful office environment.

Not all diversity and inclusion models have been designed the same way or achieved the same goals. In 1990, Roosevelt Thomas Jr., the former executive director of diversity and inclusion at Morehouse College, argued that a business could measure the success of its programs by asking the following questions: “Does this program, policy, or principle give special consideration to one group? Will it contribute to everyone’s success, or will it only produce an advantage for blacks or whites or women or men? Is it designed for them as opposed to us?” Thomas concluded that “Whenever the answer is yes, you’re not yet on the road to managing diversity.”

If Thomas’s standards seem obvious, it’s because his ideas are rooted in Martin Luther King’s vision of the “beloved community.” Through this vision, conflicts are resolved peacefully and adversaries can reconcile. Racism and discrimination are recognized as evil philosophies “based on a contempt for life,” which promote “the absurd dogma that one race is responsible for all the progress of history and alone can assure the progress of the future.” King sought to defeat injustice by embracing love over hatred.

Underpinning King’s philosophy was his belief in the sanctity of the individual and the “amazing potential for goodness” within human beings. “We do not wish to triumph over the white community,” he wrote. “That would only result in transferring those now on the bottom to the top. But, if we can live up to nonviolence in thought and deed, there will emerge an interracial society based on freedom for all.”

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/09/new-narratives-in-2020/

The Russia collusion narrative and associated Robert Mueller hysteria are all but over.

Mueller’s obstruction of justice narrative involving the non-crime of collusion is ending, too.

Donald Trump’s tax-return psychodrama is going the way of the Emoluments Clause, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment and the comical in-house coup attempt of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

What takes the place of Mueller and “the noose is tightening” bombshells? Perhaps the new narratives involving Inspector General Michael Horowitz and FISA abuse, or Attorney General William Barr’s investigation into the origins of the Russia collusion probe—far quieter, far more serious.

The media for three years obsessed over a false “Trump did it” story. But in the next 17 months, the storyline may change from the myth of the “walls are closing in” on the president to the reality that Obama-era officials committed serial felonies—from perjury and lying to federal officials, to leaking classified documents, spying illegally on a political campaign, deceiving a FISA court, and obstructing justice.

As we have already seen with the flare-up between former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (who signed a FISA writ, who wrote the memo for Comey’s firing, who appointed his old boss Robert Mueller as special counsel, and who, McCabe says, joined him for a moment in contemplating removing Trump) and former FBI Director James Comey (who likely lied under oath, deceived a FISA court, leaked classified documents and ordered informants placed in the Trump campaign), at some point, these culpable grandees will start turning on each other, and it will be hard to stop.

https://spectator.org/the-end-of-legitimacy-and-the-collapse-of-democracy/

All empires and great societies come to an end. Ours will be no exception. The fissures of collapse are already in evidence.

Nothing is as valuable to any political system as its legitimacy. Regimes mired in corruption and inefficiency stumble on for centuries if the masses believe in them. Divine right of kings sustained the French royalty despite their palpable incompetence. The Russian czar was known as “the little father” despite serfdom persisting in Russia long after the industrial revolution transformed the West.

The strength of our democracy is its legitimacy. Hillary Clinton noted this during the 2016 election campaign when she asked candidate Donald J. Trump if he would accept the election results. When he hesitated, she spoke of the implications for American democracy if he failed to do so.

Ironically,it is Hillary Clinton who has not accepted the election results. She has crisscrossed the speakers’ circuit telling eager listeners that the Russians stole the election from her. Similarly, Stacey Abrams, who ran unsuccessfully for the Georgia gubernatorial post, has attributed her loss to electoral suppression. These themes have been both sustained and embellished by the current flock of Democrat presidential candidates, notwithstanding the absence of evidence. Even in the wake of the Mueller report, Democrat strategist Donna Brazile said that Russia caused Trump to win the election.

We now know that the Mueller investigation was based on an unverified FISA warrant paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign through a cutout. Even the initially vaunted Mueller report now seems to be full of inaccuracies with the bias running in one direction. Exculpatory material of Trump’s lawyer John Dowd’s transcript has been deleted to imply wrongdoing. The full transcript compared by Internet sleuths tells a different story.

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22792/the-humanitarian-hoax-of-five-times-a-day-islam

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com

http://lindagoudsmit.com

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Islam is a comprehensive socio-political movement with a religious wing whose objective is to establish a worldwide caliphate ruled by Islamic sharia law. The stated and unapologetic strategy is settlement. What does that mean?

Settlement means war against America.

Settlement is the opposite of assimilation. For centuries, the United States has welcomed immigrants from every continent to legally enter America and become Americans through assimilation.

Becoming an American is more than a document – it is a commitment to an open and free society where citizens have the unalienable right to free speech without fear of reprisal. It is a commitment to diverse opinions and the freedom to express them. The Constitution guarantees our rights and defines American culture by stipulating what is and what is not legal in America. The Constitution articulates our fundamental principles and is the governing supreme law of the land.

Our Founding Fathers embraced the Judeo-Christian principles embodied in the 10 Commandments which provided the ethical foundation for the Constitution and outlined moral standards for life in America.

Historically, American life was structured around a work week with Sunday religious observance for Christian-Americans, and Saturday religious observance for Jewish-Americans. The arrangement was designed to be efficient and effective. Religious moral and ethical lessons were delivered in weekly sermons that were expected to be practiced by congregants throughout the work week. The separation of church and state was observed. Americans were expected to work while at work, and pray during religious services during non-working hours.

All Americans are expected to live by the laws of the Constitution regardless of race, creed, religion, or sexual orientation. The United States Constitution is the common denominator that makes all Americans part of one American family. This means that all Americans are required to observe the separation of church and state including Muslims.