RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/02/incommensurability-in-2021-american-politics/

The ubiquitous term “paradigm” and the concept of “paradigm shifts,” were popularized by the historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. He used them to characterize, roughly, a scientific theory’s fundamental elements and the changes in fundamental elements that occur with scientific revolutions and changes in theory. 

Another term popularized by Kuhn is “incommensurability.” Kuhn argued that scientific revolutions do not entail simply the accumulation of additional knowledge of the natural world but entail a recasting of the world, looking at the world in a fundamentally different way. A pre-revolutionary theory, say the Earth-centered cosmos of Ptolemaic astronomy, and a post-revolutionary theory such as Copernicus’ model of the Earth revolving around the sun, propose, in their ramifications, such different understandings of the world as to be in large part beyond shared comprehension, i.e., to be “incommensurable.”

Many view the political divide in today’s America as just a variation on the types of divisions that have always characterized American politics. That perspective is reflected, for example, in the not uncommon anticipation that the Biden presidency would entail a return to “normal.” It is seen as well in calls for, and expectations of, greater bipartisanship in Congress. But the radical agenda put forward by the progressive wing that has seized control of the Democratic Party from its former liberal leadership, and the perspectives on the nation’s past and its proper future that underlie that agenda, are no variation on past political differences. They are, rather, a revolutionary break from the past. That it is a break led and promoted by major institutions in the wider society, most notably academia (and championed by other institutions such as mainstream media, much of corporate America, cultural elites and the social media behemoths), render it that much more potent a force. 

The following list of the policies promoted in this radical agenda, and comparison of those policies to consensus perspectives traditionally shared by Americans despite political differences, illustrate how far this new agenda is from the latter. It illustrates as well why the understanding of the nation and the vision of its future embraced by these two camps—would-be post-revolution America and pre-revolution America—are incommensurable.

One: To Keep the Constitution or Replace It?

The Constitution, of course, is the foundation of the American social contract, defining the structure of the federal government, its relation to state governments, the responsibilities of both, and the freedoms of citizens. All federal and state officers take an oath to support the Constitution, as do all immigrants going through the naturalization process, and embrace of the Constitution has been seen virtually since its ratification as defining as well the common bond among the nation’s citizens. This continues to be the case today, except now there are vocal groups with significant followings in political circles, academic and media circles, and elsewhere that wish to dispense with and replace the Constitution. They note that its authors were exclusively white males, that a substantial number of them were slave owners, that the text, while looking forward to slavery’s demise, in various ways made accommodations for the interests of the slave owners in order to assure the establishment of the federal system.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-noblest-happiest-page-in-mankinds-history-11625222292?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Several years back your humble correspondent observed a diverse crowd standing in a long line on a hot summer day. The large gathering of patient people spoke with accents representing many places in the U.S. and various countries around the world. They were all happily waiting to see—not a competition or a performance or a famous work of art—but simply a room with wooden tables and chairs. As physically unremarkable as the room was, visitors reaching the end of the line were not disappointed. Many wore expressions of joy and wonder because they knew what had happened in that room in a brick building on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. Independence Hall is the place where America’s founding document was created 245 years ago this week. Eleven years later, delegates meeting in the same room created the U.S. Constitution.

As for the Declaration of Independence that we celebrate this weekend, in 1926 President Calvin Coolidge came to Philadelphia to celebrate its 150th anniversary and said:

It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.
If no one is to be accounted as born into a superior station, if there is to be no ruling class, and if all possess rights which can neither be bartered away nor taken from them by any earthly power, it follows as a matter of course that the practical authority of the Government has to rest on the consent of the governed. While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination. But remarkable as this may be, it is not the chief distinction of the Declaration of Independence. . .
It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world.

Harvard history professor David Armitage wrote in the Journal in 2014 that “the Declaration’s influence wasn’t limited to the American colonies of the late 18th century. No American document has had a greater impact on the wider world.” He added:

As the first successful declaration of independence in history, it helped to inspire countless movements for independence, self-determination and revolution after 1776 and to this very day. As the 19th-century Hungarian nationalist, Lajos Kossuth, put it, the U.S. Declaration of Independence was nothing less than “the noblest, happiest page in mankind’s history.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/indicting-the-trump-organization-11625264755?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Democrats of all stripes have devoted years to investigating Donald Trump and finding very little. The latest example is Thursday’s indictment of the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer for classifying employee benefits as business expenses rather than compensation.

Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance Jr. and New York Attorney General Letitia James subpoenaed millions of documents and years of tax returns, and that’s all they’ve come up with. The indictment lists 15 criminal counts, including second degree grand larceny. But the evidence in the indictment boils down to misreporting compensation to the Internal Revenue Service and New York tax authorities.

Prosecutors allege that Allen Weisselberg, the 73-year-old accountant and CFO, received as much as $1.76 million in compensation over a 16-year-period—for cars, an apartment rental, and tuition for Mr. Weisselberg’s grandchildren at a private school—in a way that kept them off the books for tax purposes. The indictment says he avoided paying $901,112 he owed in taxes and collected federal and state tax refunds of $133,124 he wasn’t entitled to.

If true and willful, this is rotten behavior. But it isn’t Teapot Dome, and disguising compensation as expenses is far from unusual in corporate America. It’s typically handled as a civil matter and settled with the payment of back taxes, interest and fines. It is rarely the basis for a criminal indictment.

The prosecutors are throwing the book at Mr. Weisselberg to get him to turn state’s evidence against the former President. The same goes for the highly unusual decision to indict the Trump Organization, which is presumably intended to squeeze its business prospects. Notably, neither Mr. Trump nor his children who run the business were charged.

The political motives at work are transparent. Mr. Vance has pursued Mr. Trump and his tax records for years, even as street and violent crime proliferates in New York City. Ms. James campaigned on a promise to shine “a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn.” She all but promised a selective prosecution—that is, pick a target, then search for a crime to allege.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-a-new-get-trump-committee

A congressional investigation is a fact-finding enterprise. The members aren’t neutral finders of fact — they are Republicans and Democrats who often fight over the subject and scope of the investigation. But the idea is to find facts.

Now take a look at the new Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, created this week in a nearly party-line vote in the House. Even before the investigation begins, the chairman of the committee, Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, has already found all the facts he needs to find former President Donald Trump guilty of incitement. We know because Thompson has said so, over and over again, in a lawsuit blaming Trump for the riot.

In February, Thompson, acting in his personal capacity, filed suit against Trump, presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and the groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Whatever its title, the suit is about Trump; the other defendants are just supporting players. Trump is named 126 times in the document, versus 40 for Giuliani, 47 for the Proud Boys, and 18 for the Oath Keepers. In other words, the suit is about Trump.

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Thompson begins with the declaration that Trump and the others “conspired to incite an assembled crowd to march upon and enter the Capitol of the United States for the common purpose of disrupting, by the use of force, intimidation and threat, the approval by Congress of the count of votes cast by members of the Electoral College as required by Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.” The suit says Trump created a “unified plan” to incite and then carry out the riot — the suit calls it an “insurrection” 12 times — with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers the junior partners doing the actual fighting. Thompson asks a judge to declare Trump guilty of violating 42 US Code 1985, the law covering “conspiracy to interfere with civil rights.”

So now the same Representative Thompson is leading the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. He has already decided who to blame — the task now is just to formalize the verdict.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/for_pride_month_the_us_navy_marche

When Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty and proposed some much-needed reforms, the pushback he received claimed the reforms ran afoul of Naval tradition. Churchill snapped back, “Naval tradition? Naval tradition? Monstrous. Nothing but rum, sodomy, prayers, and the lash.” More than 100 years later, it appears that the United States Navy is embracing that sodomy tradition. How else to explain that officers at a Naval Seabees unit allegedly forced everyone to attend a “Diversity Hike,” while waving a “stars and rainbow-stripes” flag as they went.

Matt Walsh first broke the news, which he received from a naval wife whose active-duty husband was one of the people forced on the march:

In the flyer announcing the hike – a flyer complete with not one, but two gay flags – the reason given for the hike was “We will support our brothers and sister [sic] whom [sic] are a part of the Pride community.” For attire, hikers were told to wear “Pride attire, colorful clothing.”

The only flag flying was this one, the stars and rainbow stripes:

Indeed, the Navy was so proud of the march and the flag that it put up a Facebook post boasting that, “In honor of Pride Month, Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit 303 went on a Pride Hike at Sunset Cliff on June 25, 2021.” It even highlighted the flag in its Facebook photos:
I won’t comment here on whether the military’s switching from “don’t ask, don’t tell” to openly LGBTQ+ service was a good thing or not. However, I see absolutely no reason why the Navy, or any branch of the American military, should be celebrating the LGBTQ+ cohort.

If people under the LGBTQ+ flag want to celebrate themselves, that’s fine, but to make it official American military policy to revel in the fact that people fornicate with people of the same sex and with people of every sex, or with people who can’t figure out their own sex is a joke. The military is about creating a force capable of defending this country at a moment’s notice. It should never be about making people who constitute a minority of American sexual identity feel good about themselves

Excerpt:

Significant relative newcomers include bloggers such as Ted Belman of IsraPundit, Dan Greenfield of SultanKnish and Ruth King of Ruthfully Yours, along with sites such as Israel Matzav, YidWithLid, Yeshiva World News and the Yiddish-titled but English-language Vos Iz Neias? (What’s New?).

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/psychoanalysis_int_he_age_of_apology.html

The age of apology has now extended beyond the political world to the psychotherapeutic consulting room. The American Psychoanalytic Association has offered a heartfelt mea culpa for trauma caused to LGBTQI patients.

Ever since it emerged from the Viennese consulting rooms of Sigmund Freud, political Utopians have used psychoanalysis to diagnose and cure social ills. From early Freudo-Marxists like Alfred Adler and Wilhelm Reich to Herbert Marcuse and Paul Goodman in the 60s, they argued that neurosis would disappear once the repressive chains of capitalism were broken. Unlike Freud, who viewed human beings as the authors of their own psychological misery, the Freudo-Marxists viewed happiness as the natural human condition, corrupted by external institutions like religion and capitalism. It is therefore the duty of psychoanalysts to align themselves with their patients’ struggles against those patriarchal institutions. Despite their efforts, utopia never arrived and so, like other revolutionaries, they turned on one another, demanding confessions and apology. In the Soviet Union, those who did not share the utopian faith were themselves ‘analyzed,’ given psychiatric diagnoses and locked up in mental hospitals. So far in this country, dissidents have not been hospitalized. Instead. they must confess to having been misguided and been the cause of the very pain they supposedly sought to cure. If they don’t they risk expulsion from the ‘woke’ community of analysts.

Utopian yearnings never die, but since they can never be realized, scapegoats must be found.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/01/defund-the-fbi/

It’s been a gold star week for the men and women of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Nearly six months after the events of January 6, the FBI, under the direction of Joe Biden’s vengeful Justice Department, is accelerating the nationwide manhunt for anyone involved. Since June 23, agents have arrested 17 people from Florida to California. Charges range from assaulting police officers and criminal trespassing to something called “destruction of property in special maritime and territorial jurisdiction and aiding and abetting.”

The dragnet is part of the nonstop campaign of terror unleashed by the Biden regime against the political Right. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who compares January 6 to the Oklahoma City bombing and Capitol protesters to terrorists, pledged the “Capitol breach” probe would be his top priority. Garland last week bragged in a press release that his department reached the “benchmark” of arresting 500 people and warned he would “hold all January 6 perpetrators accountable” for their actions that day. His prosecutors routinely ask the courts to keep the accused behind bars awaiting trials that won’t start until late this year or perhaps even 2022; dozens have been held for months in a D.C. jail that specifically houses January 6 defendants.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, despite assurances his agency treats all protesters the same regardless of partisan affiliation (LOL), is happy to assist Garland in his mission. Wray insists “domestic violent extremists”—code for Trump supporters—pose the greatest security threat to the country.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/its-1776-all-over-again-joseph-hippolito/

As the nation prepares to celebrate the 245th anniversary of its independence, Americans face perhaps their biggest existential crisis, one reflecting the issues that led to the Revolutionary War.

That crisis extends beyond critical race theory and Covid-19 vaccination. Those issues merely reflect a far deeper crisis: the demand by the powers-that-be for Americans to think of themselves as subjects rather than citizens.

Silverton, Colo., a town with about 600 residents, provides a succinct illustration. On June 14, Mayor Shane Fuhrman unilaterally banned the Pledge of Allegiance at meetings of the town’s trustees. When 10 people and two trustees responded by rising to recite the pledge, Fuhrman threatened to expel anyone who followed suit.

“To tell members of the public they are not allowed to say the Pledge of Allegiance during public comment and threaten to have them removed … violates every single one of their First Amendment rights,” Trustee Molly Barela told Denver’s KDVR-TV.

Meanwhile, school boards planning to implement critical race theory and transgender policy face passionate resistance from parents and students across the country. In Loudoun County, Va., opposition erupted after the school board fired a physical education teacher who expressed opposition to transgender policy during a board meeting. One parent, a spokesman for a group seeking to recall the board’s members, said the board wanted to stifle the parents’ role in their children’s education.

In response, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe dismissed concerns about critical race theory as conspiracy theories.

Yet critical race theory reflects the Maoist approach to Marxist revolution, as FrontPage Magazine reported in “Beijing’s Lies Matter.” As Mao said in 1963: “The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and thrived with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people.”

Black theologian James Cone developed critical race theory while two activists and scholars, Theodore Allen and Noel Ignatiev, crystallized Marxist thought on “white supremacy” and “white privilege.” Allen and Ignatiev joined the Maoists when splits arose among American communists.

Elsewhere, influencers tell Americans to “trust the science” while demanding mass vaccination against Covid-19. Influencers even advocate “vaccine passports” to ensure compliance by holding shopping, employment and school attendance hostage. On Tuesday, the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan announced that all employees must be vaccinated by Sept. 10 or lose their jobs.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/celebrating-freedom-shadow-tyranny-bruce-thornton/

This year we celebrate our nation’s birth at a time when the foundational ideas that animated our break with England are under siege throughout our political, business, educational, and cultural institutions. The iconic preamble to the Declaration of Independence–– “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”––is under assault, and tyrannical ambition continues to undermine the infrastructure of our liberty.

We focus so frequently on that world-changing preamble that we forget the bulk of the Declaration is a detailed indictment of George III in terms that evoke Classical tyranny, which Aristotle defined as “arbitrary power . . . which is responsible to no one, and governs all alike, whether equals or betters, with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will.” The cost of that tyranny is the weakening both of political freedom limited by the tyrant’s will; and of the independence necessary for self-government and full human dignity.

The Declaration, then, contrasts unalienable rights and political freedom with their opposite, tyranny, laying the foundations of a government that by design checks the excesses of power that destroy both independence and freedom. Rather than depend, as the Left has done since the French Revolution, on the progressive improvement of human nature, the Founders believed that people are by nature driven by “passions and interests,” as Madison called them. These forces motivating human destructive action cannot be eliminated or improved either by greater knowledge or by “technicians of the soul,” as Stalin called technocratic oligarchs. Rather, political institutions must divide and balance power so that “ambition counters ambition,” preserving the freedom of all, and forestalling tyranny whether of the minority or the majority.

A century of progressive assaults on the Founders’ architecture has weakened this defense against tyranny. Power has increasingly been expanded and concentrated in the federal government and its agencies. These bureaucracies are insulated from accountability to the people, and unconstitutionally combine the three functions of government––legislative, judicial, and executive––into one institution backed by the coercive power of the state.

Hence the overweening actions of agencies such as the IRS or the EPA, both of which under the Biden administration have seen their powers and funding increase. And who can forget the feckless arrogance of the NIH and the CDC during the pandemic, as it serially revised its diktats, on everything from masks to the virus’ origins, with every shift of the political winds? Or the Small Business Administration and the USDA illegally doling out grants on the basis of race?