RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.org/let-trump-be-trump-reelection-gop-establishment-reagan/

It was June 2013.

Learning that a piece titled “Can’t We All Just Agree to Ignore Donald Trump?” had been published, I responded with an article titled,

Never Ignore Donald Trump

After making the case for then-private citizen Trump as a presidential candidate three years hence, I said this, bold print now supplied for emphasis:

The real point is that Donald Trump is a man who gets up every single day and fights. He creates. He goes about his life each and every day and routinely makes contributions to American life. Some of those contributions are well known, huge and visible; countless others, one bets, are small, unknown and invisible. And in the case of his famous television show, he is more than capable of entertaining along the way. Donald Trump is no apprentice — he’s the real thing.

In this corner — and I suspect many, many corners — he is both respected and admired for what he does. Even if you don’t like Donald Trump, and I am most certainly not in that category, it is a huge mistake to ignore him. He made of his life a great and interesting — and very American — story.

We use to have a saying in the Reagan White House: Let Reagan be Reagan.

Donald Trump, like Ronald Reagan, is an American Original. Let Donald Trump be Donald Trump.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/06/the-true-crisis-of-the-humanities/

The Humanities are in crisis, as readers of Quadrant will be only too aware. What was once the jewel in the crown of scholarship in Western Civilization has become a pedagogical sheltered workshop in our universities, totally dedicated to promulgating anti-Western, anti-Liberal, anti-Democratic, and (literally) anti-Human ideologies. This situation has recently attracted the attention of the media and the Federal government, which has proposed changes to course fee structures that are intended to dissuade students from enrolling in what have become useless if not in fact pernicious degrees in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences – sending students into the streets instead of into careers.

Unfortunately, the intensity of the reaction to this appalling situation has obscured the true nature of the Humanities and their once illustrious history as the scholarly arm of Humanism, stretching back seven centuries as a field of study, and over 2000 years as a project to lay claim “to the glory that was Greece / And the grandeur that was Rome” (to quote Edgar Allen Poe’s famous words from To Helen).

This heritage has been forgotten in the increasingly furious reaction to the ideological coup that has taken place over the past 50 years. What has happened in the Humanities is that the field has been ‘hollowed out’, leaving only a shell; the traditional disciples have either been driven out or completely debauched intellectually, and a whole range of new ideology-infested subjects have set up home in their place. Perversely, while living comfortably in this ‘Humanities’ shell the tenured practitioners of these subjects have adopted as their mission the complete denunciation and destruction of the Humanities and Humanism, along with Western Civilization in general. This is the true crisis of the Humanities.

https://dianebederman.com/tear-it-down-its-all-about-tearing-down-freedom/

Victor Davis Hanson wrote “Much of the country believes that America is racist, cruel, and incapable of self-correction of its so-called original sins — without a radical erasure of much of its past history, traditions, and customs.”

How sad it that?Americans are tearing down statues across the county.  Almost all of the statues refer to the Civil War and slavery. The Civil War is the most pivotal event in American history next to the Declaration of Independence. How does eradicating the monuments related to the Civil War, the removal of statues of Lincoln, who ended the war and abolished slavery, despite the resistance from the Democrats, help in understanding racism in America?

Or perhaps this is not the point of the “book burning.” Perhaps the point is to eradicate all of America’s history from the day Christopher Columbus arrived. Why else are they removing HIS statue? After all, how dare Europeans come to the New World? How dare anyone go to the moon and beyond?

So attack Betsy Ross, the woman who sewed the first American flag, a flag of freedom, a flag too many disrespect. How about the statue of Wisconsin’s Col. Hans Christian Heg, an anti-slavery activist who fought and died for the Union during the U.S. Civil War? His statue was decapitated and thrown into a Madison lake by protesters. The Theodore Roosevelt statue is to be removed from New York’s Museum of Natural History.

Why was the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial in Duluth, Minnesota, defaced? The monument consists of the statues of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie, three black men lynched by an angry mob in 1920 and hanged from a lamppost after being accused falsely of raping a white woman. Why would anyone fighting against racism remove that statue that speaks to the attacks on black men for “consorting” with white women? Perhaps these anti-racists have never read or seen To Kill a Mockingbird. Has that been “burned”?

https://canadafreepress.com/article/systemic-racism-inherent-in-democrats-dna

If the upcoming presidential election on November 3, 2020, were not so serious, it would be downright hilarious just watching the Democrats twist themselves into pretzels in their efforts to project onto President Trump their own lengthy and shameful record of racism.

As Bill Federer of AmericanMinute.com has exhaustively documented:

In 1857, the Supreme Court, with seven of the nine justices being Democrats, decided that Dred Scott, a black slave, was not a citizen, but property. 
After the Civil War, when Republicans enacted the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in America, southern Democrats reacted by creating the vicious anti-black Jim Crow laws.
In 1866, Republican Rep. Thaddeus Stevens introduced legislation to give former slaves “40 acres and a mule,” but Democrats opposed it.

This lopsided picture continued unabated through the 19th century and into the 20th century. Only space limitations prevent me from providing a doctoral thesis worth of sordid documentation.

In 1953, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower (DDE) proposed “to use whatever authority exists in the office of the President to end segregation”…but Southern Democrat governors objected!
In 1964, Democrat senators held the longest filibuster in U.S. history––75 days––to try to prevent the Civil Rights Act from passing. Finally, Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) persuaded the leaders of his party to support a compromised bill, saying: “I’ll have those (N-words) -voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/bennelong-papers/2020/06/when-the-facts-fade-to-black/

Anthony Dillon identifies as a part-Aboriginal Australian who is proud of both his Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ancestries. Originally from Queensland, he now lives in Sydney and is a researcher at the Australian Catholic University.

“Many times I have heard blactivists dismiss high rates of community violence and child abuse with the throwaway  line, ‘Walk a mile in our shoes before you criticize.’ Maybe they should try walking a few yards in the shoes of the police just to see what it’s like. They would likely discover that the last thing police need in pressure situations is some loud-mouth sticking a phone in a police officer’s face while shouting “I’m filming this!”

Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists and their sympathisers claim to care about all black lives, which prompts me to pose a question: Why are BLMers not protesting when blacks die at the hands of blacks? Instead, during the current eruption of outrage, they focused at first on Aboriginal deaths in custody, which demonstrated what a charade they were staging, given that Aboriginal people are less likely to die in custody than non-Aborigines. Such an inconvenient fact required a change of emphasis, hence the narrative’s switch to claims of systemic police brutality. The method? Cherry-pick examples and ignore context.

Consider a recent article by Australian activist Amy McQuire in the Washington Post. In regard to the alleged racist brutality of police and the justice system, she informs her US audience that “the violence is evident in the wounds on black bodies and in the life stories of Aboriginal people.” Actually, Amy, if it’s the wounds on black bodies you are interested in, I can take you to some remote communities where you will see all the wounded black bodies you want. The perpetrators are mostly Aboriginal, so you wouldn’t be interested in telling Americans about that, not when it is more fun, and wins you more attention, to slander an entire nation in the eyes of a wider world.

In a YouTube clip (below), Amy explains that while non-Aboriginal people regard police as protectors, “for Aboriginal people we see them as the aggravators, as the unjust people, as the people that you need protection from.” Really, Amy? When you speak of ‘Aboriginal people’, are you speaking on behalf of all Aboriginal people?

 http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/24336/the-thin-blue-line

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

There are good cops and there are bad cops. There are good doctors and there are bad doctors.

The 24/7 fake news media insists that the mob is tearing down statues, smashing windows, looting, and burning down cities because a bad cop killed a man. I don’t think so.

Does the mob burn down hospitals when a bad doctor kills a patient? No, why not? Because there is no advantage to the rulers of the mob in burning hospitals to the ground. The phrase “mob rule” is a misnomer because the mob is not self-ruled, the mob does not rule the mob, the mob has leaders. ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter (BLM) are racist, supremacist, anti-American domestic terrorist organizations. Their leaders advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government, reverse discrimination, and eliminating police departments.

In a civilized society there are lawful remedies to remove bad cops and bad doctors. It can be legitimately argued that it is difficult to remove bad cops and bad doctors because their unions and licensing boards are self-monitoring and self-governing. Police unions require too many infractions for removal, and medical doctors can simply move to another state and practice elsewhere without any limitation or public disclosure. In a civilized society, the remedy for these difficulties is changing the guidelines for removal, or even the structure of the governing bodies themselves.

So, why the violence and support of anarchy? Because the rulers of the mob are not looking for lawful reform to remove bad cops – the rulers of the mob want to remove the rule of law. There are no laws without law enforcement, only chaos.

The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the largest fraternal organization of sworn law enforcement officers in the United States has over 330,000 members organized in 2,200 chapters (lodges) across the country. According to the FOP:

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/06/29/why-are-the-regressives-winning/

“As Power Line’s John Hinderaker recently noted, it’s puzzling “as to why America is allowing itself to be bullied by people who are at best ignorant and hateful, and in many cases not in full possession of their faculties.” Pushback is nearly unheard of. We’re planting the seeds of our own demise because we choose barbarism by default when we fail to stand for a civilized society.”

Columnist, farmer and classicist Victor Davis Hanson has cast the 2020 election as a choice between civilization and a return to primitivism. It’s unfortunate that we’ve come to that, but here we are.

“I don’t want to get political,” Hanson, also a Hoover Institution senior fellow, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson last week, “but this election no longer is about Donald Trump’s tweeting. It’s not about Joe Biden’s cognitive impairment. It has nothing to do anymore with a lockdown, the virus, the economy, foreign policy.

“It’s an existential question. A Manichean choice between whether you want civilization and you believe that America doesn’t have to be perfect to be good.”

Basement-bound Biden is the titular leader of America and the West’s regression from civilization. As the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, it’s a position he has no choice but to hold. His party is now controlled by elements bent on tearing down hundreds of years of progress. He could make a difference. But he won’t. It’s too easy to tread along with the wave.

So where are we in America in June 2020? Standing by while threats to “burn it down” are put into action

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/06/27/eric-hoffer-and-black-lives-matter/

Within the last month, events have propelled Black Lives Matter into a major cause, with a great deal of clout, both directly and indirectly. That influence and the anger it is associated with has also made it very risky for people to disagree with BLM even in limited ways, because of threats to objectors’ reputations, safety and livelihoods. That presents the public with a very biased conversation. As a result, perhaps only someone who has already passed on can safely air concerns.

There is one such person known for his insight into group movements – Eric Hoffer, who died in 1983. Known as the “longshoreman philosopher” for the manual labor he performed for most of his life, Hoffer wrote eleven books, beginning with 1951’s “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements,” which focused on the allure of a seemingly ennobling collective cause, and the coercive power which it puts in the hands of leaders and their discontented followers, in contrast with freedom, which is the only milieu in which creative individuals can flourish and find fulfillment.

Consider some of what the Presidential Medal of Freedom holder had to say about such causes:

The desire for freedom … says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities.

Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual.

https://spectator.us/end-history-george-floyd-civilization/

Midway through Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, there occurs this exchange between two characters:‘“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”’

The process of civilizational bankruptcy takes a similar course. Casual, seemingly isolated attacks on the fabric of civilization feel at first like so many harmless insect bites. A speaker is shouted down. A statue is vandalized or removed. A college course once deemed essential is rebaptized as offensive: first it is pilloried, then it is canceled. People start quoting Tocqueville’s warning that in a democracy, as large inequalities dissolve, small inequalities are magnified, growing both rancid and rancorous. Political posturing is everywhere. At first it seems effete and merely silly; then it grows muscles and claws. The posturing now comes with bricks, baseball bats and Molotov cocktails. Grievances blur and lose their specificity. Every slight becomes a pretext for boundless rage. The ‘system’ — ordered liberty and the rule of law — is rudely shoved into the dustbin of history. Civility itself — the social compact that makes society possible — is tossed aside as an impediment to justice.

Is this the precipice upon which we now are perched? HBO has pulled the movie Gone With the Wind because the classic Civil War story is a ‘product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society’. And while you get your mind around that nugget of politically correct virtue signaling, note that Cops, a TV show that depicts the police in a positive light, is being summarily canceled ‘amid nationwide anti police protests after Mr Floyd’s killing’, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Nidra is my dear friend- a fascinating woman and brilliant writer….rsk

* Nidra Poller (Paris) https://youtu.be/wHky3gPi0oA

Writer Nidra Poller discusses hanging out with James Baldwin and other African-American writers and musicians in 1970s Paris, the origins of the name Nidra, how her Japanese partner introduced her to Israel, and the position of women in the modern world.