RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/24/dont-let-lefts-cancel-culture-steal-our-right-to-free-speech/

A new survey shows that most Americans fear expressing their opinions these days. No doubt, they worry about being “canceled” by raving young socialists, losing their jobs or being harassed for their beliefs. It’s time for Americans to take back their First Amendment right to free speech.

The findings of the poll, taken by YouGov and the Cato Institute, are, to put it mildly, disturbing. Some 62% of those queried said they routinely self-censor because “the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.”

Republicans were most likely to self-censor, at 77%, followed by independents, at 59%. But even 52% of Democrats said they watch their mouths around others.

Not surprisingly, those in one group felt they didn’t feel they had to mind their tongues in public: self-described “strong liberals,” with just 42% saying they have to self-censor. But even that number is up 12 percentage points since 2017, the last time YouGov/Cato took their survey.

It’s not difficult to see why the fear is growing. Newspapers are filled with people and even historical figures being canceled or harassed by braying mobs of far-left activists, who use boycotts, verbal intimidation, official political re-education, doxxing and even threats of violence to silence their opponents.

In such an environment of stifled speech, people give up their precious right to speak openly to avoid being shouted down, intimidated, shunned, harassed and even fired.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/who-exactly-karen-jason-d-hill/

Last Thursday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot called White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany “Karen” after the press secretary referred to the mayor as a “derelict mayor” at a White House briefing.

Lightfoot shot back with a tweet on Twitter: “Hey, Karen, Watch your mouth.”

The term “Karen” has been used routinely and reported in the press by various individuals capturing the often — it is true — obnoxious behavior of certain women who happen to be white. These behaviors have been recorded on cell phone cameras, and, in many cases, they have gone viral.

As an academic philosopher who regularly teaches theories of concepts and philosophy of language, let me say something about the conceptually improper and actually racist use of this term.

“Karen” is a slang and pejorative term used to describe a rude white woman who is exploiting her privilege as a white woman.

Proper names are not concepts like, say, chairs, tables, birds, furniture, democracy, justice, brave, kind, evil and so on. Such terms possess a set of distinguishing characteristics that define them, and hearing those terms will automatically conjure in one’s mind that shared set of characteristics. Any person who is evil or brave or kind, regardless of background, will share a set of attributes (and their attendant behavioral traits) in common with any other person in the world who is evil or brave or kind. These terms are designators that denote specific characteristics tied to a referent (an individuals or individuals) which holds them. That is why we don’t confuse evil people with kind people, and thieves and liars with honest and truthful people. The concepts mark out the defining behaviors of the persons who bear such attributes.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/nancy_pelosis_vile_use_of_stormtroopers.html

Nancy Pelosi’s deliberate use of the term “stormtroopers” to describe America’s Homeland Security officers quelling riots and protecting people in Portland and Chicago is a vile accusation against our good officers and offensive to Jews across the world.

Speaker Pelosi must know that the Stormtroopers (SturmAbteilung, SA) were the Nazi Party’s strongarm squad, which attacked, brutalized, and murdered Hitler’s opponents, including countless German Jews, by this means setting the pattern for the Holocaust. In her unending despicable treatment of our President, she continues to propagandize against him through abhorrent language depicting anything done by the President as Hitlerian and actions by the administration as Nazi-like. This is a severe affront to our country and to those Jews who were the genuine victims of real stormtroopers.

Our Homeland Security officers in Portland and Chicago are responsible people sent in behalf of a very worthwhile and necessary mission, namely, protecting the lives of innocent people being threatened by Antifa and certain elements within Black Lives Matter, as well as protecting private property, homes and businesses, and federal buildings. They, unlike the Stormtroopers, are not engaged in genocide.

One would think that all Jewish organizations would cry foul at Pelosi’s use of the term “stormtroopers,” given that so many of our ancestors in Europe were the victims of actual stormtroopers and their evil designs. Many of our ancestors would have cheered President Trump who has been outstanding in his goodwill towards Israel and the Jewish people.  However, most American Jewish organizations have redefined Jewishness as leftist politics with the Democrat Party being its vehicle and their identification, ignoring and minimizing any unsavory pronouncement from a Democrat leader.  The success of the Democrat Party and its leftist agenda has become the most important priority of most American Jewish organizations.  

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/democrats_continue_to_lay_the_groundwork_for_resistance_ii_the_civil_war.html

It started with Hillary Clinton, who has spent the last three-and-a-half years insisting that she was cheated out of her rightful place in the Oval Office. Last week, she opined, “Well, I think it is a fair point to raise as to whether or not, if he loses, he’s going to go quietly or not.” And then she issued the marching order: “And we have to be ready for that.”

How does one get ready to overthrow the duly elected president of the United States? After all, the Democrats’ Deep State efforts during Trump’s first term have failed. Democrats are therefore getting their ducks in a row for a more aggressive challenge.

Paul Krugman did his bit with a rant that Trump could not win. From there, he concluded that the federal officers in Portland – all wearing “police” labels and DHS insignia – were secret agents “without identification,” rounding up people.

A few days ago, Nancy Pelosi took up the gauntlet when she dehumanized Trump by refusing even to name him and used eliminationist rhetoric that likened him to an insect:

The fact is, whether he knows it yet or not, he will be leaving. Just because he might not want to move out of the White House doesn’t mean we won’t have an inauguration ceremony to inaugurate a duly elected president of the United States. [Snip.] It has nothing to do with if the certain occupant of the White House doesn’t feel like moving and has to be fumigated out of there.

Now, Rep. Maxine Waters (D., the slums of L.A.) is on the job. And if you thought Krugman and Pelosi were unhinged, Waters shows that they’re rank amateurs. Waters was on Joy Reid’s new “ReidOut” show on MSNBC. To Waters, when she looks at Portland, it’s 1938 in Berlin all over again:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-phase-four-flop-11595547924?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

As Washington debates how many more trillions of dollars to borrow and spend, we are in a familiar political spot. Democrats want to spend as much as they can on everything, while Republicans have no idea what they want. Guess how this is likely to turn out?

Democrats are united behind the $3 trillion Heroes Act that passed the House in May. This is on top of the nearly $3 trillion that Congress has already passed. Much of the latter hasn’t even been spent so far. But we are told Congress must double that amount or the economy will fall off a cliff on Aug. 1 when extra federal jobless benefits expire.

Yet the economy is recovering, albeit from a deep second quarter hole. The rapid jobs rebound of May and June has slowed as the virus swept through the South and West, and partial business shutdowns have resumed. But the economic free fall of the spring is over. The Federal Reserve’s financial backstops have reduced what some feared would be a surge of bankruptcies. All signs are that if the virus can be better contained, the economy can continue to recover through the end of the year.

In any case there’s almost nothing in the “phase four” proposals that would spur faster growth. The Senate GOP’s draft proposals contain Covid-specific liability protection for businesses that reopen. That would help, assuming it isn’t watered down in negotiations with Democrats. More money for testing and health care is arguably pro-growth if it helps Americans feel more secure in returning to work and school.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/23/the_systemic_racism_trap_143779.html

Is America a deeply racist society, whose very institutions perpetuate the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow? Unfortunately, to answer “No” — even a qualified “No” — is becoming harder by the day. Since the horrific killing of George Floyd, millions have taken to the streets to protest not just police violence but to insist that systemic racism infects everything, everywhere in the lives of African Americans and others of color.

If blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately more likely than whites to be shot by police, live in poverty, have higher unemployment rates, or die from COVID-19, racism must play a primary role — or so the narrative widely repeated on the streets and in the media goes. To suggest that these statistical snapshots of complicated problems do not lend themselves to easy conclusions is heresy. Already, some academics have been ostracized and others persuaded to withdraw legitimate research that provided a more nuanced analysis of police violence. To even question whether systemic racism and white privilege are pervasive today risks being mistaken for a racist or deemed hopelessly ignorant. But the story of race in America is both more difficult and complex and attempts to eradicate all disparities are likely to lead to bad fixes that end up doing real harm.

I have spent a professional lifetime studying the effects of race-based preferences in college admissions programs. Most colleges — large and small, public and private, undergraduate and post-graduate — admit black and Hispanic students with, on average, lower standardized test scores and high school grades than white and Asian students who are admitted. My Center for Equal Opportunity found that among Virginia’s public universities, for example, the most competitive schools in the state, namely University of Virginia and William and Mary, admitted black students with SAT scores that were, on average, 180 and 190 points lower, respectively, than whites, and 240 points lower than Asians admitted.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/todays-progressive-revolutionaries-more-dangerous-than-1960s-predecessors/

In the 1960s and early ’70s, the U.S. was convulsed by massive protests calling for radical changes in the country’s attitudes on race, class, gender and sexual orientation. The Vietnam War and widespread college deferments were likely the fuel that ignited prior peaceful civil disobedience.

Sometimes the demonstrations became violent, as with the Watts riots of 1965 and the protests at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Terrorists from the Weathermen (later called the Weather Underground) bombed dozens of government buildings.

The ’60s revolution introduced to the country everything from hippies, communes, free love, mass tattooing, commonplace profanity, rampant drug use, rock music and high divorce rates to the war on poverty, massive government growth, feminism, affirmative action and race/gender/ethnic college curricula.

The enemies of the ’60s counterculture were the “establishment” — politicians, corporations, the military and the “square” generation” in general. Leftists targeted their parents, who had grown up in the Great Depression. That generation had won World War II and returned to create a booming postwar economy. After growing up with economic and military hardship, they sought a return to comfortable conformity in the 1950s.

A half-century after the earlier revolution, today’s cultural revolution is vastly different — and far more dangerous.

Government and debt have grown. Social activism is already institutionalized in hundreds of newer federal programs. The “Great Society” inaugurated a multitrillion-dollar investment in the welfare state. Divorce rates soared. The nuclear family waned. Immigration, both legal and illegal, skyrocketed.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-7-22-soho-forum-presentation-why-libertarians-should-vote-for-trump-in-2020

I hope that many readers watched my online debate for the Soho Forum this evening. Below I am posting a somewhat abbreviated version of my opening statement, together with some of my closing remarks. Note that I made some very substantial deviations from this text in the actual oral presentation. I understand that the full debate — including the presentations of the other debaters — will be posted on the Soho Forum website within a few days.

From my opening statement:

Whom should a Libertarian vote for for President in 2020?  The answer is obvious:  Donald Trump.

The main reason is not quite as obvious.  We have a two party system.  Each of the two parties represents a broad coalition of groups and interests seeking to achieve sufficient votes and in the right places to win a majority of the electoral college in the election.  Because we have a two-party system, if you want to participate meaningfully in a presidential election, you must join one of the two broad coalitions that effectively compete for the presidency.  If you refuse to join one of those two broad coalitions, you are just voluntarily excluding yourself from any effective participation in the process.

The two broad coalitions are called the Republicans and the Democrats.  And thus I submit that your only real choices are Biden and Trump.  Between those two, the choice for a Libertarian of Trump over Biden is extremely compelling.

https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/508509-trump-v-big-city-mayors-when-the-feds-should-and-shouldnt-act

More than 38,000 cops protect and serve the city of New York. By contrast, in the entire country, the FBI employs just 14,000 agents. And comparatively few of those are assigned to combat violent street crime. 

These are facts the Trump administration must weigh as the president and the Justice Department design a federal response to the surge in crime that is plaguing major American cities.

Let’s draw important distinctions, from the federal standpoint, between what is possible, what is imperative, and what would be a prudent exercise of discretion.

First, what is legally possible. It is patently absurd to contend, as many have, that the federal government needs state government permission to conduct law enforcement operations within a state’s territory. The Constitution explicitly commands the president to see that federal law is faithfully executed. The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies not only may but routinely do enforce federal law without even giving state authorities notice, much less asking for their approval.

But there is an important limitation: There must be a federal criminal law that justifies federal enforcement. 

In our federalist system, policing crime within a state’s jurisdiction — particularly violent crime and property crime — is primarily a state responsibility. The feds, by contrast, may prosecute only if Congress has enacted a law based on some responsibility the Constitution assigns to Washington.

That brings us to what it is imperative for the federal government to do.