RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/social-media-elitists-mobs-killed-dream-of-digitial-egalitarianism/

How the dream of digital equality became a nightmare

As has become increasingly evident in recent years, the utopian hope of early Internet proponents has, like that of starry-eyed enthusiasts of similar projects, sometimes led to surprising reversals in reality. One of the claims of early Internet culture is that the World Wide Web would help connect diverse communities and lead to a more democratic culture. Social media have in some ways fulfilled that promise. Everyone can have a platform now, accessible to people across the world. The user-friendly format of modern social networks is a lot more accessible than HTML coding. Varieties of online simulacra of communities have proliferated.

However, the growth of social-media platforms has also led to the creation of a few centralized nodes. A relatively small number of players (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.) have gained immense power in determining which voices can be heard through community standards and ever-shifting (and opaque) algorithms. Social-media companies have built attractive “walled gardens” and pretend that such manicured zones can be the public square as a whole.

In recent months, that pretension to universality has become less and less plausible. In part in response to the ongoing populist disruption, social-media companies have taken a much more aggressive approach in de-platforming users. That such community standards are not equally enforced across the ideological spectrum only increases the quasi-editorial power of these platforms. The power of these community standards can be seen in the fact that a fair amount of political energy is expended on battles over who can even have a voice on the platforms in the first place. The flamewars that used to happen on discussion boards and blogs across the Internet have now been funneled to a few places, which gives the moderators of such locations increasing power. Now the purported digital public square increasingly resembles a first-grade classroom, echoing with shrill volleys of “I’m telling!” (That some media corporations have led various efforts to de-platform rogue media outlets is another sign of how the currently entrenched power elite can use the digital landscape to protect its own power.)

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271935/womens-marchs-refusal-condemn-farrakhan-daniel-greenfield

The Women’s March has put out yet another statement trying to act as if it’s condemning Farrakhan, without actually condemning him.

The statement by the lefty group, whose leaders, Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour have made anti-Semitic statements and expressed support for Farrakhan, is a masterpiece of careful wording.

Women’s March wouldn’t exist without the leadership of women of color, and we stand with Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory. Women’s March leaders reject anti-Semitism in all its forms.

We recognize the danger of hate rhetoric by public figures. We want to say emphatically that we do not support or endorse statements made by Minister Louis Farrakhan about women, Jewish and LGBTQ communities.

Then it quickly shifts over to attacking the right and pretending that anti-Semitism is just a problem of white supremacism.

But never mind that.

The Women’s March still can’t even condemn Farrakhan’s bigotry. Instead it does “not support or endorse statements made by Minister Louis Farrakhan about women, Jewish and LGBTQ communities.”

Does it support or endorse other statements by Farrakhan?

Does not “support or endorse” is very different than “reject and condemn.”

When you refer to the leader of a racist hate group who praised Hitler with a honorific, distancing yourself from his rhetoric, without condemning it, you’re cowardly and complicit.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/americas-constitution-destroyed-by-leftist-agenda/

Destroying the Constitution and seeking state-mandated equality of result

The revolution of 1776 sought to turn a colony of Great Britain into a new independent republic based on constitutionally protected freedom. It succeeded with the creation of the United States.

The failed revolution of 1861, by a slave-owning South declaring its independence from the Union, sought to bifurcate the country, More than 600,000 dead later, slavery was abolished, a Confederacy was in in ruins, and the South was forced back into the United States largely on the conditions and terms of the victorious North.

The 1960s saw efforts to create a new progressive nation by swarming democratic and republican institutions. The sheer force of a left-wing cultural revolution would supposedly transform a nation, in everything from jeans, long hair, and pot to rock music and sexual “liberation.” It was eventually diffused by popular weariness with the extremism and violence of the radical revolutionaries, and the establishment’s agreements to end the Vietnam War, give 18-year-olds the right to vote, phase out the draft, expand civil rights to include reparatory action, legalize abortion, radicalize the university, and vastly increase the administrative state to wage a war on poverty, a war on pollution, and a war on inequality.

Our present revolution is more multifaceted. It is a war on the very Constitution of the United States that has not yet brought the Left its Holy Grail: a state-mandated equality of result overseen by an omnipotent and omniscient elite. The problem for today’s leftists is that they are not fighting Bourbon France, a reactionary Europe of 1848, or Czarist Russia, but an affluent, culturally uninhibited, and wildly free United States, where never in the history of civilization has a people attained such affluence and leisure.

Poverty is not existential as it once was, given high technology and government redistribution. The grievance is not that America is destitute (indeed, obesity not famine is our national epidemic). The poorer do not lack access to material goods (everything from iPhones to high-priced sneakers is in the reach of about everyone).

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/hate-crimes-rose-17-percent-last-year-according-to-new-fbi-stats/

Increases reported in crimes based on religion, race and sexual orientation, with 37 percent more crimes targeting Jews reported in 2017 than the previous year.

WASHINGTON — The FBI reported in new statistics today, with more law enforcement agencies voluntarily contributing figures to the Bureau, that hate crimes rose 17 percent nationwide in 2017.

It’s the third annual increase in a row for hate crimes overall.

There were 7,106 single-bias incidents reported involving 8,493 victims, while 69 multiple-bias hate crime incidents involved 335 victims.

The FBI found that 59.6 percent of victims were targeted because of their race or ethnicity, 20.6 percent were targeted because of religion, 15.8 percent were victimized because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation, 1.9 percent were victimized because of a mental or physical disability, 1.6 percent were targeted because of gender identity, and 0.6 percent were victimized because of the offenders’ gender bias.

Hate crimes on the basis of race or ethnicity targeted blacks 48.6 percent of the time — a 16 percent increase from the previous year — while 17.1 percent were targeted for being white and 10.9 percent were targeted for being Hispanic.

The majority of crimes against the victim’s faith were anti-Semitic, constituting 58.1 percent of reported incidents; there were 37 percent more crimes targeting Jews reported in 2017 than the previous year. Muslims were targeted in 18.6 percent of religion-driven hate crimes, while Catholics were targeted in 4.3 percent and Protestants were targeted in 2.3 percent. Bias against Eastern Orthodox and Sikhs was cited in 1.5 percent of cases.

Of the sexual orientation crimes, the FBI said 2.8 percent were targeted for being heterosexual while the rest were targets of anti-gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender bias.

Out of the offenses, 5,084 were classified as crimes against people. These included 44.9 percent intimidation cases, 34.3 percent for simple assault, and 19.5 percent for aggravated assault. The FBI also reported 23 rapes, 15 murders, and one offense of human trafficking classified as a hate crime. CONTINUE AT SITE

Conservative luminary Herb London passes away at age 79

NEW YORK – November 11, 2018 – Dr. Herbert I. London, Ph.D., founder of the London Center for Policy Research, former dean of New York University’s Gallatin Division, and leading American conservative intellectual passed away last night after a coronary ailment. He was 79.

Dr. London was born in Brooklyn in 1939. Reaching 6’5″, he led Jamaica High School to a citywide basketball championship. He played hoops at Columbia University and was drafted by the NBA’s Syracuse Nationals, although an injury kept him from playing professionally. He enjoyed a hit rock & roll record in 1959, and went on to a highly distinguished career as an academic and conservative activist. The author of 30 books on public affairs was a widely beloved fixture on the local, state, national, and global stages.

Dr. London ran for mayor of New York City in 1989. He was the Conservative Party nominee for governor of New York in 1990 and finished just 1 percent behind GOP standard bearer Pierre Rinfret. Dr. London was the Republican Party’s nominee for state comptroller in 1994.

After founding NYU’s Great Books-oriented Gallatin Division in 1972 and leading it until 1992, he ran several think tanks. He was president of the Hudson Institute from 1997 to 2011 and was also chairman of the National Association of Scholars.

In 2013, Dr. London founded the London Center for Policy Research, which he guided until his death. This organization is the vessel through which he advanced U.S. national interests and enlightened our Republic’s leaders on the vital need to ensure that America remains the greatest nation on Earth. His deep understanding of our national fabric and his wish to support the aspirations of the American people have inspired the London Center to become this country’s premier “think and do” tank. Likewise, the London Center and its scholars provide thoughtful solutions to a variety of domestic and foreign-policy challenges.

“Herb’s dedication and commitment to America and furthering its place in the world stemmed from his deep-seated love for this country,” said Eli M. Gold, senior vice president of the London Center. “His patriotism was unsurpassed.”

“Herb was a Renaissance man’s Renaissance man,” said Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the London Center’s vice president for strategic initiatives and operations. “In all aspects, he was a peerless scholar and visionary leader who knowledgeably and comfortably could discuss history, philosophy, art, science, and the latest baseball scores.”

“Herb was not only a spectacular leader, he was a good man,” said Laddyma Thompson, the London Center’s secretary and treasurer. “An amazing father to his three daughters, Stacy, Nancy and Jaclyn; an effective instructor to young people; a brilliant mentor to professionals, both fledgling and venerated; and a devoted husband to his wife, Vicki.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/obama-appointed-lawyers-thwart-trump-policies-immigration-energy/

To the Lawyer Left, elections represent a policy choice only when Democrats win.

As I write on Friday, the restraining order hasn’t come down yet. But it’s just a matter of time. Some federal district judge, somewhere in the United States, will soon issue an injunction blocking enforcement of the Trump administration’s restrictions on asylum applications.

The restrictions come in the form of a rule promulgated jointly by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, and a proclamation issued by President Trump. In conjunction, they assert that an alien who wishes to apply for asylum in the United States must act lawfully: An alien who is physically present here and wishes to apply must be in the country legally; an alien outside the country who wishes to apply must present himself at a lawful port of entry — not attempt to smuggle his way in or force his way in as part of a horde (i.e., no invasions by caravan).

Of course, what used to be assumed is today deemed intolerable. It is no longer permitted to expect of non-Americans what is required of Americans — adherence to American law while on American soil.

Therefore, the fact that the administration’s action is entirely reasonable will not matter. No more will it matter that, contrary to numbing media repetition, the rule and proclamation derive from federal statutory law. Nor will it make any difference that, in part, the president is relying on the same sweeping congressional authorization based on which, just four months ago, the Supreme Court affirmed his authority to control the ingress of aliens based on his assessment of national-security needs.

Just two things will matter. The first is that the asylum restrictions represent a Trump policy that reverses Obama policies — specifically, policies of more lax border enforcement, and of ignoring congressionally authorized means of preventing illegal aliens from filing frivolous asylum petitions (with the result that many of them are released, evading further proceedings and deportation). The second is that, precisely to thwart the reversal of Obama policies, President Obama made certain that the vast majority of the 329 federal judges he appointed were progressive activists in the Obama mold.

The media-Democrat complex will tell you this is “the rule of law.” In reality, it is the rule of lawyers: the Lawyer Left on the front line of American decision-making, a line that runs through courtrooms, not Capitol Hill.

You can already hear the retort: Conservatives do the same thing — put conservative judges on the bench to dictate conservative results. Au contraire. Conservatives really do want the rule of law, as in the laws that Congress passes and the president signs. That is, we want the country run by accountable office holders who answer to us, whom we can remove if they make bad decisions. We are willing to live under laws we oppose, provided that we have a fair opportunity to repeal or amend them. To take an obvious constitutional-law example: Though we oppose abortion, we are not looking for robed right-wingers to “discover” a prohibition of abortion in, say, the due-process clause. We think it is a matter for legislation, primarily at the state level.

That is not what the Lawyer Left is doing. They talk a good game about “ground-up democracy,” but the actual goal is top-down control. Those judges — their judges — are in place to dictate policy outcomes, not to let democracy happen.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/burying-the-other-russia-story-1541810056

Arguably the most important power at stake in Tuesday’s election was Congressional oversight, and the most important change may be Adam Schiff at the House Intelligence Committee. The Democrat says his top priority is re-opening the Trump-Russia collusion probe, but more important may be his intention to stop investigating how the FBI and Justice Department abused their power in 2016. So let’s walk through what we’ve learned to date.

Credit for knowing anything at all goes to Intel Chairman Devin Nunes and more recently a joint investigation by Reps. Bob Goodlatte (Judiciary) and Trey Gowdy (Oversight). Over 18 months of reviewing tens of thousands of documents and interviewing every relevant witness, no Senate or House Committee has unearthed evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the presidential election. If Special Counsel Robert Mueller has found more, he hasn’t made it public.

But House investigators have uncovered details of a Democratic scheme to prod the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign. We now know that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee hired Fusion GPS, which hired an intelligence-gun-for-hire, Christopher Steele, to write a “dossier” on Donald Trump’s supposed links to Russia.

Mr. Steele fed that document to the FBI, even as he secretly alerted the media to the FBI probe that Team Clinton had helped to initiate. Fusion, the oppo-research firm, was also supplying its dossier info to senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion.

House investigators have also documented the FBI’s lack of judgment in using the dossier to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against former Trump aide Carter Page. The four FISA warrants against Mr. Page show that the FBI relied almost exclusively on the unproven Clinton-financed accusations, as well as a news story that was also ginned up by Mr. Steele.

The FBI told the FISA court that Mr. Steele was “credible,” despite Mr. Steele having admitted to Mr. Ohr that he passionately opposed a Trump Presidency. The FBI also failed to tell the FISA court about the Clinton campaign’s tie to the dossier.

https://freebeacon.com/columns/history-tell-us-2018/

The lesson of 2018 is that the political class is addicted to drawing lessons. Every two years, after the ballots are counted and the winners declared, our reporters, pundits, officials, activists, and analysts turn immediately to the next election. What do these results portend? Will Trump be reelected? Will the suburbs stay Democratic? This emphasis on the future allows the political class to indulge in its favorite activity: mindless speculation. For once, it might be more useful to look backward rather than forward. History has much to tell us.

What it says is that the midterm was about average. The New York Times projects the Democrats will pick up some 35 seats, giving them at least a 12-seat majority in the 116th Congress. The fundamentals pointed to this result. Only 2 of the last 14 presidents (FDR and GWB) have gained House seats in their first midterm. Republican losses are in line with historical trends for a president with less than 50 percent support. The Democratic gain is a few seats higher than in 2006, while less than Republican gains in both 1994 (54 seats) and 2010 (63 seats).

President Trump’s approval rating in the exit poll was 45 percent. This is better than Reagan’s approval in 1982 (42 percent) and about the same as Clinton’s in 1994 (46 percent) and Obama’s in 2010 (45 percent). Trump’s approval is less than that recorded for Jimmy Carter in 1978 (49 percent) and George H.W. Bush in 1990 (58 percent). Carter and Bush lost seats in Congress too. Donald Trump may be an extraordinary man, but in political terms he is an ordinary president.

The difference between the House and Senate results is unusual. Not since 1970 has a president’s party lost seats in the House while gaining them in the Senate. Nor were Democratic gains in statehouses as large as expected. At this writing, they have won the keys to seven more governor’s mansions, but lost important contests in Ohio, Iowa, and New Hampshire. (Republican leads in Florida and Georgia have not been certified.) Democrats also won hundreds of state legislative seats, but nowhere near the amount needed to overcome the losses they experienced during the Obama presidency. The split decision makes a kind of sense: This year’s Senate map favored Republicans, even as a shift among suburban voters and independents helped Democrats.

The high number of House Republicans who did not seek reelection, combined with a liberal gusher of money, was a boon for the party of Pelosi. The Democrats out-raised and outspent Republicans in what the Center for Responsive Politics says is the most expensive midterm ever. This advantage was especially pronounced in the House, where Democrats raised $951 million to the Republicans’ $637 million. Money isn’t dispositive. But it helps.

“A society cannot be judged on the basis of its criminal, psychotic or evil members, but rather, on how it responds to them. The same goes for its anti-Semites. America—yes, Trump’s America—passes this test with flying colors. ”

In an interview with HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” ahead of Tuesday’s midterm congressional elections, New York Times op-ed staff editor Bari Weiss blamed U.S. President Donald Trump for the Oct. 27 massacre of Jews at the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Weiss was not singing an original aria in the anti-Trump opera.

Indeed, since his inauguration in January 2017, the president has been accused by his detractors of directly inciting racism among his supporters and of indirectly creating a xenophobic atmosphere conducive to violence. The mass shooting at the synagogue provided these detractors with the perfect opportunity to reiterate what they had been saying for a few days when makeshift mail bombs were sent to various well-known Democratic figures: that although Trump himself did not plant the bombs or shoot the Jews in shul, he was actually the culprit.

Weiss, then, was in good company among liberals, which is why her statements to Maher were received with wild applause from the studio audience and from anti-Trump columnists everywhere. But what gave her interview particular weight was the fact that the 11 Jews murdered while praying on Shabbat belonged to the synagogue where she had become a bat mitzvah. Two heartfelt columns she wrote about the tragedy and her personal connection to it served as the impetus for the interview in the first place.

Yet she did not squander her stage time merely on mourning the dead and bemoaning anti-Semitism. On the contrary, she used the platform to make a political plea to Jewish voters “to elect people to Congress and everywhere else that are going to protect” the “way we live in this country,” which is “an aberration in history … a miracle.” In other words, elect Democrats.