RUTHFULLY YOURS

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?

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/fauci-vs-the-science/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=blog-post&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=third

Dr. Anthony Fauci recently said that disagreement with him is usually just disagreement with the science. He also keeps insisting that even if the guidance from the CDC on masks is changing, “it can’t hurt” to wear masks.

But the science is in flux. For children, maybe it does hurt. In the Journal of the American Medical Association for Pediatrics, a new paper was published suggesting that the evidentiary basis for requiring children to wear masks was weak and that there was evidence that wearing masks caused children to inhale too much carbon dioxide. The normal CO2 limit is 0.04 percent. The upper safety limit is 0.2 percent. Children wearing masks were getting sometimes as much as 1.6 percent. One can only imagine how much worse it would be if it were — as the CDC initially recommended — a test done on children wearing them outdoors during athletic activities. The authors end, “We suggest that decision-makers weigh the hard evidence produced by these experimental measurements accordingly, which suggest that children should not be forced to wear face masks.” Check it out.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/07/02/remembering-that-governments-do-not-make-ideals-but-ideals-make-governments/

On July 4, Americans celebrate our Declaration of Independence, which was just as truly a striking declaration of liberty, new in the world. But today, many give less thought to the uniqueness and importance of the ideas and ideals that our country’s founding reflected than to what is on the barbecue.  

To reconnect to those issues, it would be appropriate to turn to Calvin Coolidge, the only president born on the Fourth of July (though both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the 50th anniversary of Independence Day). It is doubly appropriate because Coolidge honored the Declaration’s commitment to life and the liberty to pursue one’s happiness, subject only to the defense of others’ equal, and equally inalienable, rights, more than any of his successors. He also produced remarkable results without sacrificing our freedoms – substantially cutting tax rates, tax rolls and federal debt, while real economic growth averaged 7%, with 0.4% inflation and 3.3% unemployment, during his presidency.  

In particular, Silent Cal’s speech commemorating Independence Day’s 150th anniversary (though ironically on July 5) merits renewed attention, especially as he wrote his own speeches. Consider this abbreviated version:

We meet to celebrate the birthday of America … a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity … still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.

Enough time has elapsed to demonstrate … the value of our institutions and their dependability as rules for the regulation of human conduct and the advancement of civilization … They have met, and met successfully, the test of experience.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/07/01/ama-journal-masks-are-bad-for-your-kids-quit-forcing-them-to-wear-them/

A new report published by an American Medical Association journal revealed forcing children to wear face masks leads to adverse health effects. JAMA Pediatrics, a top-rated monthly journal published by the AMA, found wearing face masks increases the amount of carbon dioxide in inhaled air to unhealthy levels.

The study measured carbon dioxide levels in 45 children ages 6-17 while wearing masks. The normal content of carbon dioxide in the air is 400 parts per million (ppm), with anything above 2000 ppm considered unacceptable by the German Federal Environmental Office.

The JAMA report measured averages of 13,120 to 13,910 ppm of carbon dioxide in the inhaled air of children wearing masks, which is over six times higher than the unsafe threshold. The study further pointed out this measurement was after only three minutes of wearing a mask. Children forced to wear masks at school find themselves wearing masks for hours, five days a week.

The JAMA report follows a larger German survey of over 25,000 children, which found 68 percent of them reportedly had problems while wearing facial coverings.

“Most of the complaints reported by children can be understood as consequences of elevated carbon dioxide levels in inhaled air,” the JAMA study concluded. “This is because of the dead-space volume of the masks, which collects exhaled carbon dioxide quickly after a short time.”

“This carbon dioxide mixes with fresh air and elevates the carbon dioxide content of inhaled air under the mask, and this was more pronounced in this study for younger children.” The authors of the study urged those who are forcing children to wear masks to consider the scientific evidence when making that decision.

“Many governments have made nose and mouth covering or face masks compulsory for schoolchildren. The evidence base for this is weak,” the study found. “We suggest that decision-makers weigh the hard evidence produced by these experimental measurements accordingly, which suggest that children should not be forced to wear face masks.”

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

As we near our nation’s 245th birthday, celebrants could do worse than consider the consequences of an increase in government dependency and a decline in personal responsibility.

Among truths that underly my beliefs are two relevant to this essay: One, life is not fair. We are born into different circumstances, with different attributes and abilities. A brother was born with Prader-Willi Syndrome, a condition that adversely affected his physical, emotional and mental development. While he and I were born of the same parents, his life, in the challenges he faced, was far more difficult than mine. And two, we are not equal (and never can be) in looks, physical prowess, emotional and social skills, or mental acuity. It is unlikely Michael Jordan could have developed the theory of relativity, and it is equally unimaginable that Albert Einstein could have played shooting guard for the Chicago Bulls.  The attempt to mandate equity, a dream of Progressives, is a Utopian nightmare. In his novel He Knew He was Right, Anthony Trollope put it like this: “Each created animal must live and get its food by the gifts which the Creator has given it…” No amount of government coercion will make life completely fair and make us equal. We must each work with who and what we are. In his 1901 autobiography, Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington wrote: “Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know you trust him.”

Politicians love to compartmentalize the electorate. It is easier to serve up government offerings to a group than to argue the benefits of a particular political philosophy. Thus, we drift toward the comfort of government dependency and away from the more difficult adherence of personal responsibility. A Washington Post article from September 18, 2012, reported: “In 2011, about 49% of the population lived in a household where at least one member received a direct benefit from the federal government.” According to an op-ed in last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal by John Cogan and Daniel Bell of the Hoover Institute, the American Families Plan, if it were adopted, would add another 21 million Americans to the roles of government assistance programs. Forget what it does to our debt; think of the effect on our national character.

EXCERPTS

Indeed, media outlets don’t have to lie in order to cast aspersions on or present a figure in a less-than-flattering light. All they have to do is shift emphasis by highlighting one set of facts at the expense of another.

But even the most blatant cases of this practice in the Hebrew press never reached the low level displayed in the latest issue of Vogue, America’s top fashion magazine. As if the title of its cover story – “A First Lady for All of Us: On the Road with Dr. Jill Biden” – wasn’t sufficiently sycophantic, its accompanying content reads like a parody of a totalitarian regime’s propaganda sheet.

Those observing the current Orwellian climate in the United States no longer gasp at each new move by “progressives” to control society’s collective mind, but some take occasional breaks from tearing their hair out to laugh at the more egregious examples. Vogue’s Jonathan Van Meter, who penned the lengthy tribute, is an apt target for ridicule in this regard.

Not that he was trying to be funny. On the contrary, he was clearly proud of praising Jill Biden, in all seriousness, for the “several degrees” that earned her the “title [of doctor] that she has every right to.”

Nor did he have trouble mentioning that during a visit to Sauk Valley Community College in Illinois, “there were pink and white flowers set out everywhere, befitting her visit; they even matched her white dress and pink jacket.”

To stress that she’s not just a teacher in girlie garb, he said that during her many trips around the country, “the role she’s fulfilling is, in many ways, neither first lady nor professor but a key player in her husband’s administration, a West Wing surrogate and policy advocate.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/07/01/bidens-white-house-payroll-is-most-expensive-in-american-history/?sh=35c8d591f7f1

If the White House payroll is a leading indicator of the president’s commitment to expand government then taxpayers have a reason for concern.

Projected four-year costs of Biden’s White House payroll could top $200 million. For comparison, inflation adjusted, the Trump administration spent $164.3 million (2017-2020) and the Obama administration spent $188.5 million (2009-2012).

Today, on July 1st, the Biden administration released the annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. President Biden hired czars, expensive “fellows,” “assistants,” and spent on a much larger First Lady (FLOTUS) staff.

The payroll report included the name, status, salary and position title of all 567 White House employees costing taxpayers $49.6 million. (Search Biden’s White House payroll and Trump’s four years posted at OpenTheBooks.com.)

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/30/microsoft-honcho-testifies-that-the-doj-routinely-abuses-secrecy-orders-to-seize-data-from-american-citizens/

A Microsoft executive on Wednesday testified that the Department of Justice routinely abuses “secrecy orders” in order to seize data on thousands of American citizens without letting them know.

Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, made the accusations during a House Judiciary Committee hearing examining leak probes and prosecutorial abuse.

The hearing followed recent revelations that the Justice Department secretly seized the records of several news organizations while investigating leaks under both the Trump and Biden administrations—a practice that became increasingly routine during the Obama administration.

Relatedly, Fox News host Tucker Carlson has for the past couple of nights alleged on his show that the NSA has been monitoring his communications in an attempt to leak information, and get him kicked off the air.

Burt said that the news reports of the government surveilling the media may be shocking to many Americans, but it’s even more shocking that his company is routinely asked to handover “emails, text messages, or other sensitive data” of average citizens.

“This abuse is not new, it is also not unique to one administration, and is not limited to investigations targeting the media, and Congress,” Burt stated.

The executive said that Microsoft receives 2,400 to 3,500 of these requests for data per year, or about seven to 10 a day, and explained that the DOJ’s use of gag orders prevents them from informing users that government operatives have requested their private communications.

Because secrecy orders make it easy for partisans in the Intelligence Community to ignore due process laws while pursuing investigations, such abuses have become shockingly “routine,” according to the executive.

“Secrecy orders are too often used for routine investigations based on a cursory assertion that the government has met a statutory burden,” he testified. “The Justice Department’s own template does not even require facts justifying the need for secrecy. Instead, the template merely asserts that any disclosure would seriously jeopardize the investigation for a variety of boilerplate reasons. Notice to targets is an important safeguard for our constitutional rights.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/30/has-the-military-lost-middle-america/

Traditionalist and conservative America once was the U.S. military’s greatest defender.  

Bipartisan conservatives in Congress ensured generous Pentagon budgets. Statistics of those killed in action, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, reveal that white males, especially those of the rural and middle classes, were demographically “overrepresented” in offering the ultimate sacrifice to their country.  

When generals, active and retired, have become controversial, usually conservative America could be counted on to stick with them.  

Flyover country supported marquee officers such as Gen. Michael Hayden, Gen. James Mattis, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Gen. David Petraeus, and a host of others, whether on active duty or in retirement, when the media went after them for alleged unethical conduct, or financial improprieties, or spats with the Obama Administration that prompted resignations, or left-wing accusations of using undue force or even hiding “torture.”  

When the Left railed in Congress about the “revolving door” of generals and admirals leaving the Pentagon to use their past expertise to land lucrative board memberships with corporate defense contractors, Middle America, rightly or wrongly, mostly yawned.  

Yet traditional America also assumed their military leaders were largely apolitical and stayed out of hardball politics. Brilliant World War II commanders—Curtis LeMay, Douglas MacArthur, and George S. Patton—did not fare well when they clumsily waded through the minefields of partisan national politics.  

No longer. The Pentagon’s current and past top echelon is seen as politically weaponized—and both careerist and opportunist. Currently, generals and admirals are scanning enlistments for mythical white supremacists, in terror of left-wing pressures following the January 6 Capitol riot. They have no commensurate concern whether there are Antifa and BLM personnel with records of past violence in the military. 

We are learning that much of what was reported about that unfortunate Capitol riot was untrue. There were no “armed” insurrectionists with firearms led by conspiracist kingpins.