RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Muslim children, too, need to come to terms with German history.” — Günther Felbinger, MP with the Free Voters Party.

“At a time of increasingly rampant anti-Semitism and even anti-Semitic terrorism across Europe, the Steiner Bavarian plan, together with your generous Federal Islamic education program seems a recipe for Jihadism, ISIS recruitment and incitement to Jew-hatred, to be inevitably followed by attacks on other traditional Nazi victims: Roma, gays, women and disabled.” — Shimon Samuels, Simon Wiesenthal Center.

“We must never consider it normal that for a Jewish child growing up in Germany his kindergarten, his school and his synagogue must be guarded by police. This circumstance should provide us with an incentive to combat anti-Semitism by all means available to us within the rule of law.” — German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière.

A debate has erupted in Germany over whether Muslim students should be exempted from mandatory visits to former concentration camps as part of Holocaust education programs.

The French draft corresponds with President Obama’s own — strongly held — belief that Israel has to ascribe to the President’s view, despite just having elected a Prime Minster who disagrees.

The air is poisoned. The CEO of the French cell phone company Orange declared his desire to boycott Israel, while Orange rakes in money from its operation in the Republic of Congo, a major human rights violator.

Smash the two stories together and you get an American President supporting France in its efforts to be a major player in the Middle East in exchange for French support for the P5+1 deal with Iran.

Sometimes, if you smash two stories together, you end up with something interesting; sometimes you get something worrisome. This is one of the latter.

See this letter to the NRO editor by litigator Howard Glickstein, and Diana West’s rebuttal to the most recent libelous screed against her which NRO published.

NRO refused to publish her eviscerating point by point rebuttal, so Breitbart published it. The Breitbart rebuttal follows Mr. Glickstein’s letter.

From: Howard Glickstein

Date: June 5, 2015 at 1:09:48 PM HST

To: “letters@nationalreview.com”

Subject: Diana West, American Betrayal and your destruction of your credibility and integrity

I value National Review for Andrew McCarthy, Victor Davis Hanson and many other authors. That is why it is so dismaying and disheartening to have followed the consistently dishonest treatment NR has given to Diana West’s book, even now, two years later.

Disagreement is one thing. Misrepresentation is quite another. I have been a litigator for 36 years (AV peer rated). I have read the evidence: the book, all the pieces in NR, and Ms. West’s replies, including the ones you wouldn’t publish or buried.

You have knowingly and repeatedly published as facts demonstrable falsehoods that any fact checking intern would catch.

This is not a close call. Dozens of lies are not an accident.

NR’s conduct is unforgivable.

To see your publication become an exemplar of the Big Lie dishonors William F. Buckley’s accomplishments, integrity and memory.

I expected more from Rich Lowry.

This doesn’t pass the smell test. It reeks.

The inescapable question: since you’re lying about this, what else are you lying to me about?

In disgust,

Howard Glickstein

If you asked me what it is that makes America respected around the world, I might come up with a short list like this one off the top of my head:

1. Your living standards. The real test of your popularity is the length of the queue to get into your country as compared to the queue of those trying to get out. There’s a reason Mexican border guards aren’t patrolling their frontier against gringo illegals.

2. Your television and popular culture. Pretty much the whole world watches “The Simpsons,” “Breaking Bad” and the rest. This evinces some level of global ease with American values.

3. Your enterprise. I remember an Islamist once saying “We want your television sets, not your television programs”. He couldn’t see why the two things came as a package.

4. Your freedom. There is nowhere else on the planet where people can so confidently expect to be unharassed by the authorities.

5. Two world wars. After defeating the Kaiser, America sponsored the creation of several new nation-states from no other motive than altruism. After defeating the Axis, it went further, rebuilding and reforming the countries it had beaten. Look at modern Germany and Japan. I’d say they represent two pretty massive American achievements.

6. The Cold War, by which you liberated hundreds of millions of people from Communism, which must be considered mathematically the most murderous ideology in human history.

Alzheimer’s disease affects 5.3 million Americans and is this country’s sixth most deadly disease. It has existed for thousands of years and confounded scientists for more than a century. But that doesn’t stop the dreamers from dreaming. Last week an Ivy League-educated friend shared some big news. “Have you heard?” he asked: Marijuana might stop Alzheimer’s.

While neuroscientists, geneticists and biochemists have mapped out the disease’s multi-causal nature and its immensely complex genetic-environmental interaction, the public seems determined to find an easy out.

This wishing isn’t new. Thirty years ago the world quickly latched onto the false hope that aluminum in antiperspirant and cookware was the culprit behind Alzheimer’s. Then came the cinnamon cure, the cayenne-pepper cure, the coconut-oil cure. The latest street buzz is to say “yes” to marijuana and “no” to gluten and carbs.

Progressivism is the fear that someone, somewhere might be making a profit.

Did Bill de Blasio hear the cock crow Sunday?

There was a day Hillary Clinton counted Mr. de Blasio among her most ardent disciples. Back in 2000, long before he was elected mayor, he even managed her successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Now he’s busy denying Mrs. Clinton his support in the most humiliating way he can: on national television. He did it this past weekend on CBS ’s “Face the Nation,” when he confirmed he’s still waiting to hear her plans for addressing income inequality. In May he did it on “Morning Joe.” Back in April he did it on NBC’s “Meet the Press”—hours before Mrs. Clinton officially launched her campaign.

In between the mayor has also made campaign-like stops in Iowa and Wisconsin, released a 13-point “Progressive Agenda” for the nation and co-written (with Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren) a Washington Post op-ed on how to “revive the American Dream.” In all but name, Mr. de Blasio is making his own run for the White House.

In 2012 it was the IRS. This election watch the Justice Department.

You won’t read much about it in the Beltway press corps, but a behind-the-scenes effort is under way to lobby the Federal Election Commission and Justice Department to stifle free political speech the way the Internal Revenue Service did in 2012. Don’t be surprised if the subpoenas hit Republican candidates at crucial political moments.

In late May the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 asked the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his Right to Rise Super PAC for violating campaign-finance law. According to the letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, “If Bush is raising and spending money as a candidate, he is a candidate under the law, whether or not he declares himself to be one.”

Last summer’s Ferguson, Missouri, disturbances revealed that while blacks were 67 percent of its population, only three members of its 53-officer police force were black. Some might conclude that such a statistic is evidence of hiring discrimination. That’s a possibility, but we might ask what percentage of blacks met hiring qualifications on the civil service examination. Are there hundreds of blacks in Ferguson and elsewhere who achieve passing scores on civil service examinations who are then refused employment? There is no evidence suggesting an affirmative answer to that question.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes called the Nation’s Report Card, nationally, most black 12th-graders’ test scores are either basic or below basic in reading, writing, math and science. “Below basic” is the score received when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. “Basic” indicates only partial mastery. Put another way, the average black 12th-grader has the academic achievement level of the average white seventh- or eighth-grader. In some cities, there’s even a larger achievement gap.

“I worry that over the course of several administrations but certainly this administration, the stiff arm that is being given to the media, that has been given to the public has become excessive. In this administration there were more than 550,000 times that the administration has claimed some sort of exemption and not let that information out,” he said at a National Journal event focused on Chaffetz’s chairmanship.

“In fact, less than 30 percent of the time that somebody submits a FOIA request do they actually get information back, a full and complete accounting of what they asked for, less than 30 percent. That’s just not who were are as a people.”

Chaffetz said the U.S. differs from every other country in the world by being open and transparent.

History is not static and it does not progress linearly. There was more free speech and unimpeded expression in 5th-century Athens than in Western Europe between 1934-45, or in Eastern Europe during 1946-1989. An American could speak his mind more freely in 1970 than now. Many in the United States had naively believed that the Enlightenment, the U.S. Constitution, and over two centuries of American customs and traditions had guaranteed that Americans could always take for granted free speech and unfettered inquiry.

That is an ahistorical assumption. The wish to silence, censor, and impede thought is just as strong a human emotion as the desire for free expression — especially when censorship is cloaked in rhetoric about fairness, equality, justice, and all the other euphemisms for not allowing the free promulgation of ideas.