RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/11/what-caused-the-political-hysteria/

The Left has gone mad over Donald J. Trump—past, present, and future. 

The current Democratic Party and NeverTrump “conservatives” assumed that Trump was and remains so obviously toxic that they do not have to define exactly what his evil entails. 

Accordingly, they believe that any means necessary are justified to stop him. And furthermore, these zealots, when out of power, insist such extraordinary measures should not be emulated and institutionalized by their opponents, much less ever boomeranged back upon their creators. 

In this context, the Republicans retaking control of  the House of Representatives once again raises the question whether they should reply in kind. 

Given the current investigation following the Mar-a-Lago raid, should there also be a mirror-image special prosecutor to examine President Biden’s lost stash of classified documents in his insecure office following his vice presidency? 

Can House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) ever be considered too inflammatory, given that his predecessor, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tore up the president’s State of the Union address on national television? 

How many Democratic House members should be denied committee assignments to remind the Congress that Pelosi’s rejection of Republican nominees was a terrible precedent? 

How many congressional subpoenas with threats of criminal prosecution and performance-art arrests should be issued to Democratic politicos to stop the criminalization of political differences? 

In our current age, will all former president’s private homes, closets, and drawers now be subject to FBI raids to ensure that “classified” documents were not wrongly stored there? 

Are Joe Biden’s current homes also a logical target, given his sloppy handling of classified foreign policy papers—eerily reminiscent of an abandoned laptop belonging to son Hunter Biden and daughter Ashley Biden’s lost diary? 

Was it ever a good idea to impeach a first-term president the moment he lost his party’s majority in the House—but without any hope of a conviction in the Senate? Would such a similar impeachment send a warning to Biden to honor his oath of office and start enforcing U.S. immigration law? 

Does a phone call now an impeachment make, on the grounds that Trump mixed domestic politics with foreign policy? 

But was Trump’s Ukrainian call that much different from Barack Obama’s 2012 quid pro quo in Seoul, South Korea, where he asked the Russian president to convey a deal to Vladmir Putin: stay calm and give Obama space during his reelection bid while Obama in turn would be flexible on missile defense. 

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

The word liberal reminds one of Humpty Dumpty’s proclamation. It means different things to different people. The word is polysemous. To the Left it means big government, which actively supports social change. To the Right it refers to less government interference, the endorsement of individual rights, civil liberties, and free markets. The word stems from the Latin, liber, meaning free or unimpeded. In Lewis Carroll’s story, the word that caused the skirmish was glory, when used as a verb. “They’ve a temper – some of them, particularly verbs,” Humpty Dumpty says to a puzzled Alice. The word liberal is not temperamental (at least as far as I know), but it can self-camouflage, to ambush the unsuspecting.

Over the years, the Left has usurped the word. so that for most the word refers to those who prefer a large role for government in their lives, while conservatives have become deplorables, birthers, conspirators, or just plain racists or right-wing nuts. We on the right should seize the word back. In his 1953 book The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk wrote of Edmund Burke (1729-1797), of how he defended the liberties of Englishmen against their king and of Americans against king and parliament. He defended those liberties not because they were innovations, “…but because they were ancient prerogatives, guaranteed by immemorial usage. Burke was liberal because he was conservative.” (Highlights mine.)

It is amusing to consider how the definition of liberal has morphed over time, so that today’s social liberals consider themselves the sole owners of the word, “even as,” Daniel Henninger wrote in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, “they surrender to the state an array of long assumed freedoms – of opinion, speech, and privacy.” Classical liberals believe that such rights, along with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” are natural; they are God-given. The purpose of government is to secure and ensure those rights, not to dictate social behavior. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/a_call_from_alexander_hamilton.html

In light of the dismaying set of events that has put our country at great risk, it is intriguing to read the words of Alexander Hamilton to George Clinton dated February 13, 1778.  Written from Valley Forge immediately after his arrival at headquarters, Hamilton expressed his deep concern about the “degeneracy of representation in the great council of America.”

Hamilton notes that each day Americans “see and feel, that there is not so much wisdom in a certain body, as there ought to be, and as the success of our affairs absolutely demands.”

Many members of it are no doubt men in every respect, fit for the trust, but this cannot be said of it as a body. Folly, caprice, a want of foresight, comprehension and dignity, characterise the general tenor of their actions.

Of relevant concern to 21st century Americans is Hamilton’s assertion that

Their conduct with respect to the army especially is feeble, indecisive and improvident — insomuch, that we are reduced to a more terrible situation than you can conceive.

Furthermore, “[this] has produced such carelessness and indifference to the service, as is subversive of every officer-like quality.”

Consider how the current American military brass is betraying the United States by “embracing leftist racism and anti-Americanism.  Their radicalism is pushing conservatives out of the armed forces while undermining unit cohesion and troop morale.”  Critical Race Theory (CRT) has infiltrated the military and dividing members of the armed forces into opposing camps of ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed’ [.]” 

Defense Secretary­­­­­­­­ Lloyd Austin is an advocate of anti-American views and has required CRT and the 1619 Project as part of the military training programs.

Moreover, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has worked to “divide and weaken the military by bringing the Black Lives Matter curriculum of anti-white and anti-American hate into its ranks.”

In 2020, Admiral Michael Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations vowed to eliminate “systemic racism.” 

Although Marxism is the animating feature of the above, Alexander Hamilton’s words highlight that “they have disgusted the army by repeated instances of the most whimsical favouritism in their promotions; and by an absurd prodigality of rank to foreigners and to the meanest staff of the army. They have not been able to summon resolution enough to withstand the impudent importunity and vain boasting of foreign pretenders [.]”

https://thespectator.com/topic/need-know-joe-biden-classified-documents/

We are still in the early stages of discovering what the documents discovered in Joe Biden’s office at the University of Pennsylvania contain and how highly they were classified, so we don’t yet know how dangerous the violation was. But there are things to keep in mind as the story unfolds.

1. Biden’s lawyers did him a huge favor by instructing him not to ask about the documents

It’s the last stand of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Still, as one tabloid used to proclaim,“Inquiring minds want to know.” In particular, we want to know how sensitive the material really was (overclassification is a problem in Washington) and where the documents were held between the time Biden left the vice presidency and the time the Penn Biden Center opened.

2. Biden might pay a political price for staying mum about possessing the documents improperly

But that price will be considerably diminished because the “neutral” press doesn’t want to hurt a Democrat. The public has observed that bias for years, eroding their trust in the press.

3. Pay no attention to the Department of Justice’s failure to leak anything about the documents’ discovery before the November election

It would not have affected any votes. The Republicans screwed up that election all by themselves. What the DoJ’s silence does tell us is that the department doesn’t leak much when disclosures could hurt Democrats. When they could hurt Republicans, the department is a sieve.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/12/equity-is-not-the-same-as-fairness/

This is the second piece in our series about modern idolatry, also known as secular religion. It discusses the elevation of equity – the principle of outcomes forced to conform to racial and ethnic demographics – to a moral imperative that has penetrated the highest levels of academia, business, and government. It hides behind high-minded platitudes but is at its core a tool for corruptly accruing and wielding economic and political power.

For a start, the main tenet of the Church of Equity is “righteous” reverse discrimination as a way to attain certain outcomes, a seeming contradiction to civil rights and equality under the law. Non-believers are subjected to denunciation as racists and may even lose their livelihoods if they work in an environment that has been intimidated into submission to the faith. Their missionaries are the legions of zealots dedicated to defending and promoting what we call IED – inclusion, equity, and diversity – on college campuses, in companies, and throughout government. Equity is not a benign religion.

Equity has gained traction less for its moral underpinnings than the lure of promised benefits to those who feel underrepresented or inadequately rewarded. People instinctively prefer to be led by others like themselves – the natural affinity for tribalism – and, unsurprisingly, are suspicious if their peers seem to be less successful than members of other tribes. Equity’s focus on demographic entitlement provides the illusion of representative leadership and economic fairness while it discounts considerations of ability, character, and achievement.

But there is good reason to question the elevation of equity. For example, in determining outcomes, why should innate characteristics of race or ethnicity displace other equally innate characteristics such as intelligence and motivation? Why should a record of hard work and achievements be subjugated to an entitlement? Polls show a large majority of people disagree with allocating outcomes by race, in part because they consider individual achievement and merit to be requisites to upward mobility.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/what-to-do-about-bidens-classified-docs

WHAT TO DO ABOUT BIDEN’S CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS? On Monday evening came one of those stories that seem almost too convenient to be true. CBS News reported that Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a U.S. attorney to investigate classified documents found in an office used by President Joe Biden after he left the vice presidency.

What???!!! Does that mean the current president improperly held classified documents like his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, is accused of doing? As if on cue, reporters at a number of news outlets jumped into action, determined to explain to readers that the cases are totally different. Worried that Republicans would “seize” on the news to suggest an equivalence between Biden and Trump, many in the media sought to portray the two investigations as entirely dissimilar affairs: Trump bad, Biden not bad.

But there are some distinct similarities, both in what we know and what we don’t know, about the Biden and Trump investigations. First, the most obvious: Both men apparently kept classified information at a place they used for business after leaving office. As commentators reminded us many, many times during the Trump investigation, that can be a very serious problem. Both men had the highest access to classified information, Biden as vice president and Trump as president. And both men left those high offices to set up working spaces in other places, Biden at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C., and Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Here is a really important similarity. In neither case do we know what the classified documents were. All through the Trump investigation, with so much sensational and overwrought reporting — all through that time, the public never knew what the documents were that Trump allegedly mishandled. Were they truly the nation’s most important national security secrets? Or were they examples of the overclassification that plagues the federal government, when noncritical information is classified at a higher level than it deserves, if it should be classified at all? We don’t know the answer in the Trump case, and we don’t know the answer in the Biden case.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/10/where-is-the-fbi-raid-of-joe-biden/

Documents marked classified from Joe Biden’s time as vice president were reportedly found in a private office, but there won’t be an FBI raid.

There are plenty of reasons why 4 in 5 Americans see a two-tiered justice system. On Monday, federal officials gave the public another textbook example.

Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the U.S. attorney in Chicago to investigate nearly a dozen documents marked classified from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president found at a private office, according to CBS News. The documents, supposedly marked top secret, were found buried at a space Biden used when he was an honorary professor at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington. The center was a project of the University of Pennsylvania.

“The material was identified by personal attorneys for Mr. Biden on Nov. 2, just before the midterm elections, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president confirmed,” CBS reported. “The documents were discovered when Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys ‘were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.’”

There were no federal agents raiding the president’s personal offices, no dramatic press conferences announcing the prosecution of an enemy of the state, and certainly no warrants granting law enforcement virtually unlimited scope to confiscate whatever they wanted.

It remains unclear what documents, exactly, Biden may have been stashing in the closet of an old workspace. They may not even be important, considering Washington has a chronic overclassification problem; just try compelling a federal agency to cough up public documents through the Freedom of Information Act. How the documents were discovered, however, shows Americans all they need to know about the political nature of the nation’s premier law enforcement agencies.

When former President Donald Trump was suspected of harboring classified papers in his Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago, Garland sent more than 30 plainclothes FBI agents to raid the 128-room complex as the administration’s personal stormtroopers. The attorney general’s foot soldiers even rifled through Melania Trump’s wardrobe operating under a warrant that allowed agents to confiscate any record her husband may have come into contact with when president. Federal officials ultimately carried away 15 boxes of material that the Justice Department claims featured the nation’s most heavily guarded secrets.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/musk-exposes-fauci/

Elon Musk is transforming Twitter from a government censorship bureau into a powerhouse of investigative journalism. The Biden Junta doesn’t like it.

Musk’s tweet of “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci” drew a furious reaction from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who said criticizing Dr. Fauci was “dangerous,” “disgusting” and “divorced from reality.” Musk didn’t think so, and started digging deeper.

On December 28,  Musk tweeted, “Almost no one seems to realize that the head of bioethics at NIH – the person who is supposed to make sure that Fauci behaves ethically – is his wife.” That would be National Institutes of Health bioethics boss Christine Grady.

Musk’s tweet caught the attention of Bruce Y. Lee, a Professor of Health Policy and Management at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health and a staunch defender of Dr. Fauci as a “real scientist.”

“Just because someone has the words ‘Chief,’ ‘Bioethics’ and ‘NIH’ in her title doesn’t mean that she [Grady] heads all of bioethics at NIH,” wrote Lee in Forbes.  “That would be like saying that a head barista runs all of coffee everywhere just because ‘head’ is in that person’s title and that person deals with coffee. Or that a musk rat somehow oversees everything that Musk does, just because they share the word ‘musk.’”  Readers learn nothing about Christine Grady’s fascinating career.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/is-the-west-living-in-the-end-of-days/

An apocalyptic vibe seems to have settled over the West. Signs and portents abound: The Covid plague and the Russo-Ukrainian War have unleashed two of the Four Horses of Revelations. For those not terminally “woke,” gaudy transexuals performing for prepubescent school-children, and credentialed medical doctors poisoning and mutilating healthy children and young people bespeak the moral idiocy that typically marks civilizational collapse. A self-created energy crisis threatens to turn off the heat and lights and all the other amenities of modern civilization. And cities rife with murder, daylight plundering of stores with impunity, junkies shooting up near schools, excrement polluting the sidewalks, and the mentally disturbed roaming streets and subways summon up images redolent of rough beasts whose time has come round at last.

What we’re really talking about is that staple of historiographical pessimism, what in 1918 Oswald Spengler called the Decline of the West. Since then many moments of Western decline have come and gone. But is this time different? Are we finally facing the end of the most sophisticated, wealthy, and powerful civilization in history?

Our geopolitical rivals certainly think so. Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, and Khamenei’s Iran watch our cultural degradation, hedonistic lives, intolerance for physical and psychic discomfort, obsession with even low risk, and dwindling faith, and calculate that we no longer have the nerve or convictions to maintain our global dominance, and can be pushed aside for new, autocratic Axis Powers that will be the global hegemons.

To this geopolitical triumvirate, the Western “new world order” postwar paradigm comprising democracy, rule by law, free-market economies, political accountability, human rights, equality of the sexes and sexual preferences, confessional tolerance, and the separation of church and state is played out. Now other, more autocratic traditions marginalized by the arrogant West will be better stewards of the global community.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/what-elections-wont-fix/

Whoever wins in 2024, our problems run deeper.

“Whether Trump, DeSantis, or someone else is the best person to capitalize on this fluidity is beyond my capacity to discern. Events are moving rapidly, and much will happen in the interim. The best we can do for now is to heed Abraham Lincoln’s parting counsel in his 1852 eulogy on Henry Clay: “Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence, trusting that, in future national emergencies, He will not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security.”

We typically talk about elections in terms of data and hot takes—the language of pollsters, pundits, and plodding academics like myself. But none of that seems adequate to the moment. The questions and problems of our time go far beyond ordinary electoral politics, and yet they take place within the context of those politics.

Through all the turmoil of his two years out of office, Donald Trump remains an emblem of all those deeper questions we hope to resolve in and through politics. His enemies are still out to destroy him. His supporters long for redemption (revenge?) in 2024. There’s no doubt that the Republican Party is still Trump’s party. He will be the nominee if he wants it, and by announcing his candidacy after the 2022 midterm election he certainly seems to want it. In poll after poll, with one recent exception, Trump dominates among Republican primary voters. At present the only challenger with any traction at all against Trump is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis, understanding the terrain, so far refuses to challenge Trump. On the other hand, it is possible that the public’s views on Trump have hardened to the point where they now constitute a ceiling that he cannot break through. The possibility that Trump’s moment has passed opens the field to other possible candidates. The conversation, however, always seems to come back to DeSantis as the obvious, perhaps the only, viable alternative.

Since the day after the 2020 election, I have been singing the praises of Ron DeSantis. He cleaned up, or at least reduced to tolerable levels, election corruption in Florida. He has shown excellent instincts on everything from resisting coronavirus hysteria to countering the indoctrination and mutilation of children. He displayed considerable courage in going toe-to-toe with Disney, one of the largest corporations in the world and one of the largest employers in his state. The aftermath of Hurricane Ian has allowed DeSantis to manifest great managerial competence. The surest indicator we have that recovery is proceeding apace is that it isn’t being reported on by our media. Were this Katrina redux, but with the darling of the Republican Party in charge, we’d have wall-to-wall coverage from every media outlet in America. The results speak for themselves: in four years, DeSantis has turned the purplest of purple states into a GOP stronghold.