RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/nationalism-good-and-bad-bruce-thornton/

The last two weeks we have been inspired by the brave resistance of Ukraine’s people to the brutal violence of the Russian invaders. Outmanned and outgunned, the Ukrainians have continued to fight against overwhelming odds, even as the invaders answer their resistance with atrocities like the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol.

The paradox is that both sides in this war are in part motivated by nationalist loyalties that the transnational “new world order” has proclaimed are quaint superstitions and folkways at best, and intolerant promulgators of xenophobia and violent aggression at worst. What the Russo-Ukrainian war shows is that patriotic nationalism, like pretty much everything we humans do, can be good or bad, depending on the intentions and purposes it serves.

The weakening of nationalism reflects the globalist ideology that slowly developed over the last two centuries. It reflects two developments that define modernity: secularism and the world-shrinking technologies that expanded global trade. For most of humanity, faith has been one of the foundations of national identity like language, history, culture, customs, and mores. But especially in the West, faith has been reduced to a private preference banished from the public square, rather than being part of the collective expression of national identity. It’s no coincidence that over time the decline of patriotism has paralleled the decline of faith.

The other development was new 19th-century technologies like the railroad, telegraph, and steamship, which created a global economy. International commerce brought the world’s peoples closer together and bound them by trade, creating a global economy which brought disparate national cultures together. The gradual growth of greater global trade and its managerial elite suggested that international cooperation and similar interests were more efficient and beneficial than the zero-sum national difference that frequently, like religion, fomented violent conflict. Similarly, transnational organizations, covenants, and treaties would turn force into a costlier and less effective means of adjudicating conflicting national interests than international diplomacy.

Especially after the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 20th century––which were blamed on nationalist loyalties rather than on the malignant novel ideologies that exploited them––nationalism fell out of favor, particularly to the global elites and supranational institutions of the “rules-based international order.” Nationalism became a malignant ghost from the past that the enlightened global elites scorned.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/16/fed-had-one-job-to-do-it-failed/

Along with President Joe Biden and Congress, the Federal Reserve has a responsibility to manage inflation, a job it was established to do. And just like Biden and Congress, the Fed has failed at its job.

At the Fed’s own website, it states clearly what its primary job is, by law: “Conducting the nation’s monetary policy by influencing money and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of full employment and stable prices.”

Well, today, we have neither “full employment” nor “stable prices.” On Tuesday, the government reported that wholesale prices, that is prices just a step before retail, surged 10% in February.

As bad as that number was, it didn’t include the huge jump in energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Consumer prices rose “only” 7.9% in February. So expect them to go even higher next month.

This inflation came thanks mostly to absurd policies – paying people to stay home while spending trillions of dollars of “stimulus” on federal programs not related to COVID – pursued by the Democrats who control both Congress and the White House.

Even some Biden political supporters say it’s the Democrats’ fault, not “Putin’s price hikes” or “COVID,” or “corporate greed.”

Indeed, former Obama administration economists Larry Summers and Steven Ratner have both said that, contrary to all the finger-pointing, Biden and Congress are to blame for the current inflation.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/how-joe-bidens-policies-made-this-energy-crisis/

President Biden’s statement that his administration ‘can’t do much’ about high gas prices is an abdication of duty.

P resident Biden has found a new scapegoat for continuously increasing gas prices.

Last Tuesday, when asked what his administration can do about record-high gas prices, the president replied: “Can’t do much right now. Russia is responsible.” This flippant response is both demonstrably inaccurate and an insult to the working Americans whose paychecks have been increasingly depleted every week since the Biden administration took office.

The truth is that the Biden administration has spent 14 months waging a war against American energy production, and we are now seeing the consequences. With the midterm elections rapidly approaching, Biden’s advisers, too stubborn to admit that Biden’s war on American energy was a mistake, have decided to use the Ukraine crisis to cover up this historic blunder. What’s more, President Biden — with his war on American energy increasing our dependence on Russian oil and the price of that oil — has funded Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The facts clearly reveal what has happened, and they stand in stark contrast to the false narrative that the White House is peddling. The truth is that American gas prices have steadily and substantially increased over the past 14 months because of President Biden’s myopic policies.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/romneys-treason-smear-of-tulsi-gabbard?s=w

The crime of “treason” is one of the gravest an American citizen can commit, if not the gravest. It is one of the few crimes other than murder for which execution is still a permissible punishment under both U.S. federal law and the laws of several states. The framers of the U.S. Constitution were so concerned about the temptation to abuse this term — by depicting political dissent as a criminalized betrayal of one’s country — that they chose to define and limit how this crime could be applied by inserting this limiting paragraph into the Constitution itself; reflecting the gravity and temptation to abuse accusations of “treason,” it is the only crime they chose to define in the U.S. Constitution. Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution states:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Treason was the only crime to be explicitly defined and limited by the Founders because they sought “to guard against the historic use of treason prosecutions by repressive governments to silence otherwise legitimate political opposition.” In other words, the grave danger anticipated by the Founders was that “treason” would radically expand to include any criticisms of or opposition to official U.S. Government policy, activities they sought in the Bill of Rights to enshrine as an inviolable right of U.S. citizenship, not turn it into a capital crime.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/top-ten-scapegoats-biden-has-blamed-his-failures-robert-spencer/

Old Joe Biden tweeted on June 4, 2020: “It’s hard to believe this has to be said, but unlike this president, I’ll do my job and take responsibility. I won’t blame others. And I’ll never forget that the job isn’t about me — it’s about you.” As is so often the case, he was lying. Since he started pretending to be president, Biden has blamed an endless series of scapegoats for his steadily spreading dumpster fire. It’s virtually everyone’s fault but his, and he has consistently made sure that Americans have a steady and sober regard for the suffering of their noble, selfless, heroic president, constantly let down by venal, self-serving opportunists and worse. Here is a list of 10 of Biden’s scapegoats:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-excuses-rising-putin-war-russia-ukraine-gas-prices-inflation-american-rescue-plan-build-back-better-stimulus-spending-11647275414?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

‘Make no mistake, inflation is largely the fault of Putin.”

Even by the high standards of political mendacity, the attempt by President Biden last week to assign blame for the acceleration of prices that began just over a year ago to a war that began just under three weeks ago is remarkable for its cynicism, its dishonesty and its desperation.

The cynicism is so sweeping that you have to sit back and marvel. How much contempt do they have for the intelligence of Americans to think that there are enough who would believe such a proposition?

In fact we have a good sense of the depth of the disdain the president has for Americans’ understanding of their economic circumstances. In that same speech, to the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference, he bemoaned that all his hard work doesn’t get the respect it deserves.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/15/does-anyone-recognize-this-country-anymore/

The U.S. went through a historical convulsion in the 1960s, and not only survived but emerged restored and optimistic in the 1980s. This time, though, the destroyers are better organized and seem more determined than their predecessors. We hope there are still enough Americans who believe the country is worth defending.

Don’t make the mistake that the political left wants a strong and prosperous U.S., and the only differences it has with the center and right are the methods for how that is achieved. The left, especially its progressive wing of radicals that is taking over the Democratic Party, wants America to be just another country, yet one in which a loud, power-hungry, elitist mob, with the support of an army of useful idiots, rules over everyone else.

The current remaking of America differs from the 1960s upheaval in a number of ways. The most prominent, though, would be today’s war on the First Amendment. The desire to control speech, and eventually thought, has created a dynamic in which Big Tech acts as a government agent to censor speech unapproved by the ruling class.

“A growing number of governments are asserting their authority over tech firms, often forcing the businesses to comply with online censorship and surveillance,” reports Freedom House. “These developments have contributed to an unprecedented assault on free expression online, causing global internet freedom to decline for an 11th consecutive year.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/598084-get-ready-here-comes-the-biden-recession

At a recent confab, President Biden’s imperiled party pushed a new message: Democrats deliver.

The proposed slogan was panned; Democrats were terrified Republicans would respond with: “Yes! Democrats deliver crushing inflation, soaring crime, an open border, critical race theory for tots, full-term abortions on demand, a woke military, high taxes and out-of-control spending. And now… will Joe Biden’s Democrats deliver a recession?”

Yes, just when you thought things could not get worse, along comes the very real possibility of a downturn, thanks to Bidenomics, the war in Ukraine and an inept Federal Reserve. A year ago, during a robust recovery, such a forecast would have seemed ludicrous.

A top Wall Street economist recently conducted an informal poll of his firm’s clients. To his surprise, 100 percent thought the U.S. would be in a recession by next year.

Why such gloom? It starts with accelerating inflation, caused by out-of-control government spending and measures taken by the Biden White House that kept workers on the sidelines. Inflation is also being fueled by soaring energy prices, thanks to lower U.S. production amid reviving growth and now the disruption to Russian oil exports.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/kevindowneyjr/2022/03/14/when-demand-for-racism-exceeds-supply-fake-it-guess-who-scribbled-an-n-bomb-on-a-high-school-wall-this-time-n1566320

These stories have become as ubiquitous and annoying as that 1-877- Kars 4 Kids jingle.

A “white supremacist” writes something racist on a school wall. The students are SHOCKED! How could a drooling, white nationalist goober infiltrate their scholastic utopia? (Was it the janitor???) The angry students skip class to protest the hatred! White students tearfully rally around their black friends and vow to protect them from the tiki-torch-wielding bushwhackers who are likely patrolling the streets at night, noose in hand, looking for a minority to lynch.

The school’s principal or dean valiantly vows to oust the seething bigots and restore the racial equilibrium that has so violently been shattered.

Finally, there’s a break in the case!

A black kid did it. Again.