RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270626/independence-day-and-recovery-true-freedom-bruce-thornton

We are celebrating this Independence Day in the midst of a conflict over what freedom really means. Whatever the crisis du jour that dominates the news cycle, whatever the conflicting policies and clashing ideologies, look deep enough and you’ll find the ancient war between those who believe in true freedom and citizen autonomy, and those who have reduced it to just doing what one wants subject to the intrusive power of Big Government guardians.

Start with the origins of today’s holiday, which were the American Colonists’ desire for political freedom and autonomy. The thirteen colonies, their customary rights for self-rule violated by England, took the momentous step of creating an independent state that empowered citizens to debate and decide how they would collectively chart its course and pursue its aims. This political community would be free and sovereign because it would not be subjected to any earthly power beyond the collective consent of the citizens as expressed through laws and political institutions to which politicians could be held accountable.

Yet this idea of freedom was dependent on citizens’ knowing how to use this freedom responsibly and for the proper aims. For freedom is not “doing as one likes,” which is not true freedom, but what the 18th century called license, a selfish indulgence that cares nothing for the good of the state as a whole, but everything for the needs and ambitions of one faction or ideology. This selfishness breeds tyranny and the loss of freedom, for to act on whatever selfish appetites and passions that arise in one, is to enslave the soul to them and subject the self and the political community to their destructive effects. As Russell Kirk wrote, “The worst enemies of enduring freedom for all may be certain folk who demand incessantly more liberty for themselves.”

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

The birth of a nation like the birth of a child celebrates unity and separation simultaneously. The child is born and exists outside the mother’s body as a separate entity and at the same time becomes a part of an expanded family unit. So it is with countries. When America was born in 1776 she became a separate entity existing outside of Great Britain. America’s Declaration of Independence celebrated the country’s separateness at the same time it established the unity of an extended family of American citizenry.

Most discussions focus on the benefits of unity – few examine the advantages of separateness. Our country is young but our Founding Fathers had centuries of European history to teach them the value of separateness.

In trying to form a more perfect union our Founding Fathers examined the political systems of their day and rejected them all. They said NO to monarchies, NO to totalitarianism, NO to authoritarianism, NO to theocracies, and NO to every form of collectivism that prioritizes the group over the individuals in it.

Separateness from Great Britain, separation of church and state, and the separateness of the individual were essential to American freedom, liberty, and upward mobility. On July 4, 1776 the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence and declared their separateness as the United States of America.

For almost two centuries people came to America in search of religious freedom and the opportunity for upward mobility that was the American dream. Coming to America was a chance to be free of monarchies, theocracies, caste systems, and authoritarian, totalitarian political systems demanding subservience to the state. America was the land of opportunity because it was the land of individualism, the meritocracy, and upward mobility.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-decline-never-seems-to-arrive-1530572850?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=5&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

EXCERPT:

“……And yet somehow, the flag has continued to fly. Why does American power look so fragile and remain so resilient? One reason is that the U.S. emerged just as the pace of human history was accelerating. In the mid-18th century, the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution unleashed ideas and technologies that would transform the world. Modern capitalism exploded into being. The social turmoil, geopolitical instability, and technological change now battering the global system are only the latest stages in a long process whose end we can’t yet see.

The U.S. has stood the challenge better than most. Now in its 230th year, the American political system is one of the world’s oldest. But the revolutionary force of capitalism isn’t finished with us. The social and political changes of the 21st century challenge the institutions that humanity so painstakingly assembled in the second half of the 20th. Across the globe, societies must renew themselves as the information revolution reshapes the way people work, think, interact and engage in politics.

This is doubly hard for the U.S., which must not only reform its own domestic institutions but also act as custodian of a world system under strain from globalization, technological disruption and great-power rebalancing.

As Franklin well knew, there are no guarantees that the American experiment will work. Yet he and his fellow Founders designed a system of government to weather the stress and the strain of revolutionary times. The strength and flexibility of Madisonian federalism have enabled the American system to flourish amid more than two centuries of successive upheavals.

But constitutions, however elegant, can’t breathe life into dead polities. It is the union of sound institutions with a strong national spirit—ordinary Americans’ patriotism, democratic faith and enterprising ambition—that has made America such a force in the world.

Noisy extremists on the political fringes notwithstanding, that spirit still rules in America today. As long as it does, the country will continue to astonish the world with its creativity and its capacity for renewal. For now, at least, we can still answer Francis Scott Key’s anxious question in the affirmative: our flag is still there.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-abortion-scare-campaign-1530573972?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_artPos=5#cxrecs_s

Some things in politics are predictable—a New Jersey tax increase, a “no” vote by Senator Rand Paul, and an abortion-rights scare campaign every time a Republican President makes a Supreme Court nomination. And sure enough, the predictions of doom for abortion and gay rights began within minutes of Anthony Kennedy’s resignation last week. These predictions are almost certainly wrong.
***

“Abortion will be illegal in twenty states in 18 months,” tweeted Jeffrey Toobin, the legal pundit, in a classic of cool, even-handed CNN analysis soon after the resignation news. Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer was almost as definitive. “Whomever the president picks, it is all too likely they’re going to overturn health-care protections and Roe v. Wade,” the 1973 abortion-rights decision, Mr. Schumer declared. “We don’t need to guess.”

The first thing to keep in mind is that this is what Democrats and their media allies always say. They said it in 1987 when Justice Kennedy was nominated. They said it in 1990 about David Souter, again about Clarence Thomas in 1991, John Roberts and Samuel Alito in 2005, and Neil Gorsuch in 2017. They even claimed the Chief Justice might overturn Roe because his wife is a Roman Catholic. Mrs. Roberts is still waiting to write her first opinion.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/01/the-left-is-slipping-into-terminal
Let’s face it. There are no liberals on the left these days…only aspiring totalitarians.

Well, last week was quite a week. For one side, a week of winning. For the other, a week of wailing.

It will be no secret to regular readers that I am in the former camp. I think it is a good thing that so-called “public-sector unions” can no longer force non-union workers to pay dues. Indeed, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I think public-sector unions are an abomination that have no place in a free republic. They all-but-guarantee systematic corruption.

As Daniel DiSalvo notes in Government Unions and the Bankrupting of America, such unions “extract dues from their members and funnel them into politicians’ campaign war chests, then those same politicians agree to generous contracts for public workers—which in turn leads to more union dues, more campaign spending, and so on. It is a cycle that has dominated the politics of some of America’s states with dire consequences.” Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court took an important step in breaking that vicious cycle.

First Amendment Wins
Last week was also a win for religious liberty and free speech. Henceforth, religious pregnancy counseling operations will no longer be required to post advisories informing clients that an abortion is just a quick trip to the local abattoir, a.k.a. Planned Parenthood.

Then there was the decision upholding President Trump’s moratorium on travel to the United States from certain countries known to be hotbeds of terrorism. I am wholeheartedly with the majority on that one, too, partly because I think our government has a duty to be circumspect about whom it allows into the country, and partly because I dislike grandstanding district court judges who presume to usurp the president’s legitimate constitutional powers by issuing injunctions on a “nationwide basis” against properly formed executive orders.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/hilarious_satire_of_dem_apoplexy_over_trumps_next_supreme_court_pick.html

Hilarious satire of Dem apoplexy over Trump’s next Supreme Court pick

The obsessive media hatred of President Trump has made them entirely predictable. Everything he does is not just wrong, it is an outage. And everyone he appoints to office is utterly, irredeemably evil, so malign that dining at a restaurant is a threat that must be countered by mobs.

Blogger Don Surber has provided us with a splendid satire of the spittle-flecked media madness that will erupt as soon as President Trump announces his nominee for the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Kennedy. What makes this brilliant satire is that it is a generic editorial that could (and will) be published against anyone the president chooses. Don instructs journalists:

To those still laboring at a craft that last had impact in the 19th century, I draw upon my 27 years of experience to offer this generic editorial on whomever President Trump nominates for the Supreme Court.

You may cut and paste it, and your boss will not notice the difference.

The Senate Must Reject This Monster

President Trump — a vain, deranged, and impulsive man elected by Russia and not a majority of Americans — has nominated the worst judicial candidate since Roger Brooke Taney, the chief justice who authored the Dred Scott decision. [Nominee’s name] may be worse. Not only does [he or she] view African-Americans as chattel, but women as second-class citizens!

Read the whole thing.

https://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/no-substitute-for-total-victory/

As the Left continues to spiral out of control — foaming, spitting, frothing in rage — it’s time to state the obvious: that in the battle for the soul of America, there can be only one winner. Either we retain as much as possible of the country-as-founded, including its national character, or we watch it “fundamentally transformed” into a “social democracy” of the kind envisioned by the adherents of Critical Theory, and brought to us courtesy of the Frankfurt School’s ideological seizure of academe. Although some might wish otherwise, there is no middle ground, no accommodation, no splitting the difference.

Our opponents on the Left understand this perfectly well. Their motto, for decades, has been “there is only the fight,” which also happens to have been the title of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s senior thesis at Wellesley. They’ve made it very clear all along that they’re in this for the long haul. Conservatives like to think that history, tradition, logic, and morality will win out in the end, and that our opponents will eventually see the error of their ways, if not the light. But as history shows, that’s simply not true. The Left won’t stop unless it is stopped. Which means that, for us, total victory in the defense of Western civilization and the American ideal is the only option.

Ascribing good motives to our friends across the aisle is a fool’s errand. Like most villains, they think of themselves as the heroes of their own twisted morality play, casting themselves as noble superheroes for truth, silver-surfing the “arc of history” as it bends toward their definition of justice. We, however, see their assault on our history, customs, and traditions as nothing of the sort; to us, they are the vandals who cannot abide something they had little or no hand in creating, and just want to see the world burn. After watching liberals hide behind the Bill of Rights for decades — because it protected them when they were weak — we can only shake our heads in wonder at the effrontery of something like this story in the house organ of Leftist Central, the New York Times:

On the final day of the Supreme Court term last week, Justice Elena Kagan sounded an alarm. The court’s five conservative members, citing the First Amendment, had just dealt public unions a devastating blow. The day before, the same majority had used the First Amendment to reject a California law requiring religiously oriented “crisis pregnancy centers” to provide women with information about abortion. Conservatives, said Justice Kagan, who is part of the court’s four-member liberal wing, were “weaponizing the First Amendment.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2018/06/29/trumps-lean-white-house-2018-payroll-on-track-to-save-taxpayers-22-million/#2c55e8384e4f

President Trump’s White House payroll has 374 employees, that’s 95 fewer staffers than Barack Obama at the same point in their presidencies. The Trump White House workforce runs 20 percent leaner.

White House staff experienced 39-percent turnover during the last 12-months. Of the 377 employees last year, only 229 remain. Most that left were quickly replaced.

Today, the Trump administration released its annual report to Congress on the White House Office Personnel. The payroll data includes employee name, status, salary, and position title for all 374 White House employees as of June 30, 2018. Search the recent Trump administration (2017 and 2018) and Obama administration (2012 through 2016) payroll data posted at OpenTheBooks.com.

Over the past 12 months, Trump was able to further shrink head count by three employees. Last year, the president employed 377 staffers and we applauded the president’s frugality in our editorial at Forbes.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Perhaps the universe operates according to a plan? I don’t know. But life on earth is in constant and unpredictable flux. Change is ever-present, whether caused by nature or man. What is needed are pilots to help navigate treacherous shoals, not whether to move left or right, but to plot courses based on a moral compass, in accordance with the ideals laid down by the Founding Fathers and one dependent on simple, proven principles of right and wrong, like common sense, the Ten Commandments, or Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life.”

No month is without news highlights and June was no different. Certainly, Singapore vied for top billing. However, the story in the winning envelope was the release of the Inspector General’s report on its probe into the actions of the FBI and the Justice Department during the summer of 2016. It tells a story of corruption, collusion and bias within the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. Even The New York Times reported that it painted a harsh portrait of the FBI during the 2016 presidential election, describing a destructive culture in which James Comey, the former director was “insubordinate… Senior officials privately bashed Donald J. Trump, and agents came to distrust prosecutors.” Current FBI Director Christopher Wray, in a subsequent press conference, appeared in denial: He said he took the report seriously, but nothing in it “impugns the integrity” of the FBI. “Our brand is doing just fine.” The Wall Street Journal reported: “Though IG Michael Horowitz’s conclusions are measured, his facts are damning.” While the report claimed there was no documentary or testimonial evidence to suggest political bias, facts suggested otherwise. Most damning was the text exchange between Peter Strzok, the FBI agent in charge of the Trump-Russia investigation and his paramour, top FBI lawyer Lisa Page. In August 2016, Ms. Page texted Mr. Strzok, “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right?” Mr. Strzok responded, “No. No, he won’t. We’ll stop it.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/trump-russia-probe-house-republicans-grill-rod-rosenstein/

The political branches are designed to scrap with each other, not dictate to each other.

‘You’re the boss.”

That was Representative Jim Jordan’s terse rejoinder during a feisty exchange with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearing on Thursday. The Ohio Republican was blasting Rosenstein over information Republicans say Justice Department officials have concealed from Congress for a year.

As the jaw-boning continued, Rosenstein fended off claims that he had personally withheld files, redacted key portions of documents, and counseled a controversial witness, FBI agent Peter Strzok, to refuse to answer questions at a closed-door congressional interview.

These calls were made by subordinates, Rosenstein DAG-splained.

“They work for you,” Jordan bluntly replied.

And so it went. Rosenstein pointed out that, yes, 115,000 people work for him. Translation: He cannot possibly know what each of them is doing the moment they are doing it. When condescension failed, he tried earnestness: He’ll intercede with underlings if the committee brings any errors to his attention. Tin-eared, he emphasized that he had already done this several times . . . oblivious to the committee’s exasperation that it has several times been necessary to do.

Two discordant notes clanged throughout the joust. First, if Rosenstein is not actively instructing his charges to withhold information, he needs to work on his management skills, since they clearly assume this stonewall is a top-down enterprise. Has anyone been disciplined for hiding from Congress Strzok’s explosive text promising to “stop” Donald Trump from being elected? And that’s hardly an atypical concealment. If Rosenstein isn’t encouraging this nonsense, how come nobody’s walking the plank over it?

Second, while House Republicans revel in reminding anyone who will listen that DOJ’s intransigent middle managers work for Rosenstein, they never quite get around to mentioning that Rosenstein works for President Trump. The president is better positioned than the DAG to order more transparency. And if the “witch hunt” narrative is valid, the president would be the chief beneficiary of more transparency. Yet, for all his Twitter bombast, Trump abstains . . . and then House Republicans dutifully target their ire at Rosenstein.

There’s lots of “deep state” rhetoric in the air, but Thursday looked more like a quagmire: Everybody dug in, everybody more vulnerable than their bravado suggests.

The information at issue relates, in part, to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — and specifically when and why the Obama administration monitored the Trump campaign on suspicion of “coordination” in the Kremlin’s perfidy. Also on demand are documents pertinent to the Hillary Clinton emails investigation.