RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/25/we-live-under-a-tyranny-of-the-self-righteous/

We no longer live in an age of moral relativism, but one of moral absolutism.

That’s one observation made by Canadian academic Eric Kaufmann in his latest book, Taboo, published this year. It’s an arresting inversion of a long-held view. Everyone today does indeed seem to know what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’.

But it also makes it hard to square the argument that postmodernism is at the root of our ethical woes and moral vacuum. Rather than living in a state of doubt and ambivalence, as postmodernism’s most optimistic advocates argued in the 1990s, we now actually inhabit a world where people cleave to firmly held truths and fight over them with righteous fury.

This can be seen most evidently in the present day over Israel and the Middle East. For many, the Israelis – and very often, by extension, the Jews – are the personification of evil. Hence, the precipitous rise of virulent anti-Semitism and of correlating sympathy for the Palestinians. In the minds of many, this is a war of good against evil. The Palestinian flag has itself become a universal symbol of goodness. And when you feel you have good on your side, any sort of appalling or belligerent behaviour or words are permissible.

This Manichean viewpoint is replicated in matters over the environment. Here, those who supposedly have right on their side deem it acceptable to resort to any sort of anti-social behaviour because it’s for a ‘good cause’. Self-righteousness is an intoxicating sensation and a self-perpetuating one. The self-righteous become consumed by their own sense of power. Elsewhere in this regard, others abide by the creed that race determines everything. Others hold to the inviolable sanctity of trans rights.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/two_lawsuits_challenge_swampbuster_and_the_regulatory_labyrinth_of_the_administrative_state.html

Dwight Waldo, whose 1948 book The Administrative State gave the eponymous term widespread usage, believed that public administration is rational action designed to maximize public goals.

Unfortunately, the administrative state and its bureaucrats no longer have the public on their minds.

Without any constitutional authority, the administrative state frames, enforces, and adjudicates the regulations of a plethora of alphabet agencies. Unelected bureaucrats, politicized by monied NGOs and lobbyists, exercise powers of all three branches of government, disregarding the separation of powers and the checks-and-balances provisions of the Constitution.

Such is the viselike hold of the administrative state that Chief Justice John Roberts, dissenting in a 2013 judgment on a regulatory scheme of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), wrote: “The administrative state ‘wields vast power and touches almost every aspect of daily life….’ The Framers could hardly have envisioned today’s ‘vast and varied federal bureaucracy’ and the authority administrative agencies now hold over our economic, social, and political activities.”

An example of the arbitrary power the administrative state wields are some of the rules agencies have framed for the Swampbuster provisions, passed by Congress in 1985, under which the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) can deny benefits to farmers who do not voluntarily give up farming on wetlands. And who designates wetlands? It is the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a federal agency of the USDA. Using Swampbuster, the USDA has come to regulate property it would otherwise not have been able to.

However, four recent Supreme Court decisions have reined in the administrative state. The court swept aside decades-old precedents to shift the balance of power from the agencies to the courts. The Swampbuster provisions and NRCS-framed rules, too – seen by many legal experts as violative of property rights and overly broad in implementation – have been challenged in two recent lawsuits. Though the courts have yet to decide on the Swampbuster lawsuits, the four Supreme Court decisions will likely have a strong bearing on the cases.

Here, in brief, are the salient points of the four rulings:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/it_s_still_the_economy_stupid_globalists.html

A paradigm shift occurs when there is a radical change in thinking from an accepted point of view to a new one.  Changes in social consciousness are not easy.  Institutions defend orthodoxy with all their assorted powers, while new ideas receive support only from iconoclasts who are often dismissed as kooks or disparaged as domestic enemies.  

Prevailing opinion is like a heavy boulder sitting in the valley between several steep hills.  For a novel idea to succeed, its proponents must push that boulder up the slope until it reaches the top of a neighboring peak.  Two observations follow from this analogy: (1) when moving the heavy boulder of conventional wisdom in a new direction, the gravity of traditional consensus works to roll it right back into the valley where it originally rested, and (2) once the boulder is finally pushed up a hill with the force of sufficient evidence and popular support, it will quickly roll down the other side and rest in a new valley of conventional wisdom.  Changing human minds, in other words, is a punishing exercise until you reach a tipping point, when social change occurs rapidly.

We are right now in the midst of one of these phenomenal paradigm shifts.  Americans are “awakening” to the idea that the federal government does not have their best interests at heart.  They are pushing back against mass illegal immigration.  They are resisting government surveillance and censorship.  They are questioning economic regulations that have weakened private property rights while giving a small number of corporations and financial elites almost total control over commerce, the food supply, and the monetary system.  

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/10/daniel-pennys-homicide-trial-begins/

Tragically, the homicide trial of former Marine Daniel Penny, in connection with the choking death of Jordan Neely, a violent, mentally disturbed vagrant who was menacing passengers on a New York City subway train, is underway. Jury selection began on Monday.

Last spring, Penny, who happens to be white, was indicted by Manhattan’s elected progressive, Democratic district attorney, Alvin Bragg — not long after Bragg indicted Donald Trump in the farcical case that was tried earlier this year. There is a symmetry here.

The Progressive Prosecutor Project is mainly about two things: using government’s law-enforcement apparatus against the political enemies of progressive Democrats and converting the justice system into a racialized morality play — not law and order but oppressors and oppressed. Just as Bragg would never have charged Trump if the former president hadn’t been the Democrats’ political nemesis and likely opponent in the 2024 election, Bragg would never have charged Penny had Penny been a black former Marine who intervened to protect himself and other passengers from Jordan Neely — particularly if Neely, who was black, had happened to be white.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/10/24/biden-we-gotta-lock-him-up-still-dont-believe-lefts-illegal-lawfare-assault-on-trump-is-real/

Democrats have denied that their serial attempts to imprison former President Donald Trump and a long list of his former aides, political allies and supporters amount to an illegal campaign of political lawfare. But how else do you describe President Joe Biden’s shocking demand this week that “we gotta lock him (Donald Trump) up”?

Of course, immediately after saying it, Biden even in his attenuated mental state realized he had said something horribly wrong. So he backtracked, auto-erased his initial comment and said, “politically lock him up.” Which of course is a non-sequitur.

Lock him up for what? Does it really matter? As the Queen said in Alice In Wonderland, “Sentence first — verdict afterwards!” Biden and his allies just want Trump to go away. For a long time, if possible.

The point is, the goal of lawfare isn’t justice. It’s political. Raw politics of furthest-left kind, first used by the Chinese communists, then exported to leftist governments across Latin America. American leftists have embraced the idea with fervor, in particular the idea of using government to censor and silence your political foes.

“A recent report by the House Judiciary Committee drew striking parallels from Brazil’s censorship regime to the Biden administration’s actions urging social media platforms to censor Democratic rival Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or silence critics like Tucker Carlson,” wrote Joseph Humire, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “These actions undermine the rule of law and weaken America’s moral standing at home and throughout the Americas.”

All can now see the Democrats’ endgame here. Trump has been rising in the polls, while Vice President Kamala Harris has been falling. Indeed, Trump right now stands a good chance of winning, as both recent polls and betting web sites show.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21038/house-with-nobody-in-it

“The House with Nobody In It” by Joyce Kilmers (1886-1918), brings to mind a certain house in Washington, D.C. — the White House. Our White House is not just a residence, it is a command post. The Free World depends on it. If there is no apparent occupant, how will the U.S. contend with threats to our allies and us?

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are “the new ‘Axis of Evil,'” according to Politico, hardly a right-wing outlet. How worried should we be? Probably very.

The United States is already facing two wars at full tilt, and another, it seems, on the way. Russia is still trying to seize Ukraine the same way it seized Crimea. In the Middle East, Israel, the size of New Jersey, is fighting a defensive war on seven fronts to protect its existence and that of civilization from a genocidal Iran — about to have nuclear weapons — and its proxies. In the Pacific this month, warships from Communist China have been encircling Taiwan, threatening Japan and the Philippines, and seemingly preparing to crush US naval assets should they try to intervene.

At home, the United States has in recent years been overrun by more than 10 million illegal migrants, including an estimated 1.7 million “gotaways” about whom nothing is known, such as how many there actually are. More than 323,000 children who have crossed the border are “missing.” No one even knows their names or where they are, or who might be abusing them. Presumably they have been forced into slavery, sex slavery or dangerous labor. All those are in the U.S. in addition to an estimated 10.5 million illegal migrants who were here before 2021.

Violent gangs, such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, which are made up of youths mainly from South America, have been increasingly infiltrating the U.S. been commandeering apartment blocks at gunpoint and terrorizing people in Colorado, Texas and New York.

An unprecedented surge of 55,000 illegal migrants from China have entered the U.S. in recent months. China does not grant visas to its people to vacation in the Adirondacks. While some of these migrants might be seeking a better life, others seem to have the “the makings of a Chinese army” inside the US. There has been a “massive surge” of unaccompanied “military-age Chinese men,” with “many of them having ‘known ties’ to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and People’s Liberation Army,” according to Rep. Mark Green. They are possibly waiting for orders from CCP headquarters to sabotage the US electric grid, air traffic control, bridges, ports and other infrastructure. Some of these men have been trying to enter US military facilities. FBI Director Christopher Wray has already warned that Chinese hackers might be waiting for “just the right moment to deal a devastating blow.”

https://www.thefp.com/p/front-page-how-blm-blew-90-million-plus?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com

It’s Wednesday, October 23, and this is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Coming up: Are smartphones stealing childhood?; the Abercrombie & Fitch CEO charged with sex trafficking; plus, legacy media quotes a Municipality of Gaza spokesperson without revealing his likely ties to Hamas. But first, the rise and collapse of Black Lives Matter. 

A lot can change in four years. Just ask Kamala Harris, who’s walked back various 2019 policies such as a fracking ban and support for Medicare for All. Now she’s boasting about owning a Glock. Meanwhile, Democrats have forgotten they ever uttered the words “defund the police.” But perhaps the most vivid example of how we’re not in 2020 anymore—and that the vibes have most definitely shifted—is the fall of Black Lives Matter. In 2020, after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, the movement took on quasi-religious status, with chapters raising $90 million in one year. Today, the BLM brand is widely recognized as a scam that lost $6.2 million in the last fiscal year. 

Earlier this month, Tyree Conyers-Page—a.k.a. Sir Maejor Page—the 35-year-old former leader of the BLM chapter for Greater Atlanta, was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison for money laundering and wire fraud. Instead of spending the $450,000 raised from 18,000 donors to “fight for George Floyd,” Page splurged on tailored suits, nightclub bar tabs, an evening with a prostitute and, as he texted to a friend, “a big-ass” mansion in Ohio. 

Page is not an outlier. Take Melina Abdullah, co-director of BLM Grassroots, who media reports accuse of using the organization’s money to pay for vacations to Jamaica and her own personal expenses. Though Abdullah has not been charged with a crime, California’s attorney general has threatened to revoke her organization’s tax-exempt status if she fails to turn over its delinquent tax filings and late fees by Sunday. 

“Abdullah has denied the allegations, but at least $8.7 million in donations is unaccounted for,” writes investigative reporter Sean Patrick Cooper in his first piece for The Free Press. “The answer to where the money went may come soon.” 

“Maybe,” Sean concludes, “if the founders had been as committed to social justice as to enriching themselves, BLM could have enjoyed a long life as a progressive institution.” Instead, the movement is a cautionary tale for what happens when people with good intentions are given too much money. Read Sean Patrick Cooper on how BLM misspent millions of dollars. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/victory_within_reach.html

Victory is such a glorious word.  Anybody who has ever felt victorious knows exactly what I mean.  Those of us who have been lucky enough to grasp it also know that it does not last.  It arrives, fills the soul with a warm sensation of contentment and gratitude, and vanishes almost as quickly as it appeared.  Once the effervescence of victory blows away, those who felt its touch speak of it with reverence.  The word is pronounced more slowly and with more care as the passage of time pushes it deeper into our memories.

I hope President Trump is re-elected in the next couple weeks and that those reading now will feel what I describe above.  Some might say, “It’s just politics,” or “It doesn’t really matter,” or “We never win.”  But it isn’t just politics, it matters a great deal, and winning is only a small component of the 2024 election.  You can walk into a casino, pull the lever on a slot machine, and become a big winner.  But you will not feel victorious.

Why is that?  Because victory is about so much more than winning.  Victory is success in a struggle against overwhelming odds.  It is the completion of a challenge with almost unbearable difficulties.  To be victorious is to push through pain and anguish.  It requires transforming into something greater than you were when you started the journey.  It comes with physical and emotional costs.  That’s why victory tastes so sweet.  It is an exotic fruit that grows on a tiny island in the middle of a vast ocean.  Once you find it, nothing ever tastes the same.

Have we suffered?  Absolutely.  We’ve endured as politicians sent the best blue-collar jobs overseas and manufacturing towns collapsed.  We’ve watched the Federal Reserve print dollar bills on demand, lawmakers jack up the national debt to once unimaginable sums, and investment banks gamble with our retirement savings.  We’ve fought wars for “American freedom” only to discover that the people pushing those wars could not care less about our constitutional rights or individual liberties.  We’ve seen the American dream fade as the cost of living precipitously rises and opportunities for economic advancement disappear.  We’ve witnessed the fracturing of the Union as the federal government intentionally disregards immigration law and floods the country with tens of millions of foreign nationals with little interest in assimilation.  We’ve experienced cartel violence while officials cook the books and lie about crime going down.  Hell, yes, we’ve suffered…but we’ve also persevered.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/23/californias-unelected-tyrants/

Democrats claim that the MAGA movement constitutes a “threat to democracy.” Once you cut through their incessant rhetoric on race and gender, the threat the Democrats most fear is that an elected chief executive may actually try to control the executive branch. And when candidate Trump aligns himself with capable businessmen, including Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, government bureaucrats aren’t wrong to be afraid for their jobs along with the repressive policies they’ve imposed.

Voters who still haven’t made up their minds which threat to take seriously—“protecting democracy” vs. “draining the swamp”—should ponder life in California, where Democrats, run by bureaucrats and billionaires, wield absolute power. Decriminalized crime. Record homelessness. Punitive, impossible cost of living. The highest taxes. Failing schools. Fleeing businesses. And a state bureaucracy that is openly hostile towards unsubsidized home builders, oil and gas producers, farmers, loggers, ranchers, manufacturers, and any other productive, job-creating citizens.

If you want to pick one bureaucracy in California that epitomizes the ignorance, fanaticism, arrogance, and corruption that plagues that state, look no further than the California Coastal Commission. Ran by an unelected 12-member board, this state agency has the power to stop virtually any activity they wish if it is within five miles of the Pacific Coast or in the ocean within three miles of land. For nearly a half century, along an 840-mile coastline stretching from Oregon to Mexico, the Coastal Commission has been a capricious tyrant.

One of the most consequential examples of the Coastal Commission’s recent abuse of power was their unanimous rejection of a proposed desalination plant in Huntington Beach in Southern California. This facility would have produced 55,000 acre-feet per year of fresh water from the ocean and had already painstakingly secured permits and approvals from a dizzying array of federal, state, regional, and local agencies. The company attempting to build the plant, Poseidon Water, spent over 20 years and more than $100 million fighting off environmentalist lawsuits and paying for innumerable engineering studies and permit applications. The plant would have been an exemplary model of how to safely desalinate ocean water with minimal environmental impact. But in May 2022, in a 12-0 decision, the California Coastal Commission killed the project.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/barack-obamas-anti-constitutional-lecture/

The Dems are marshaling their forces in the face of Kamala Harris’s waning support from voters. Particularly troubling for them is the loss of a fifth of black men’s support, given that in a tight race it doesn’t take a lot of defections to determine the outcome. So, the Party’s éminence grise, Barack Obama, went to Pennsylvania, a critical swing state, to lecture a group of black men in Pittsburgh.

Obama expressed his displeasured with black males’ lack of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris, which seemed “to be more pronounced with the brothers.” Nor did Obama like the “reasons and excuses” for their disaffection with Harris, which one imagines include issues such as inflation, crime, and the chaotic border. With condescending arrogance, Obama sniffed, “I have a problem with that.”

Worse yet, Obama exploited an insulting stereotype that black men are misogynists. Brushing away those “reasons and excuses” that trouble millions of voters of every ethnicity, Obama explained that “Because part of it [male support for Trump] makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”

The blow-back from all sides was swift. “Obama’s remark,” The Hill reports, “have drawn the ire of several prominent Black Americans. Former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner asked, ‘Why are Black men being lectured to? Why are Black men being belittled in ways that no other voting group [is]?’ Turner added ‘she has a lot of love’ for Obama, ‘but for him to single out Black men is wrong, and some of the Black men that I have talked to have their reasons why they want to vote a different way, and even if some of us may not like that, we have to respect it.’”

Senator Corey Booker (D-NJ) agreed on X: “Voting for someone solely based on the color of their skin is a shallow approach that undermines the true value of leadership and character. Judging a candidate on their principles, vision, and ability to lead, rather than rely on racial identity should be the deciding factor.”