Americans Need A New Media

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/21/americans-need-a-new-media/
“Today’s journalists are a collection of liberty-loathing progressives, Neo-Marxists, aspiring tyrants, busybodies, and angry juvenile activists”

The news media can be anything they want to be. There are no laws that demand them to be objective, fair, truthful, or accurate. Consequently, we have an army of journalists who are nakedly biased, vainly divisive, childishly spiteful, and purposely destructive. We can only hope our free market economy responds to the great business opportunity at hand before the press and its Democrat allies make doing so impossible as they work to shut down free enterprise.

At one time, long before radio, television, and the Internet, the newspapers in this country were party organs. Wikipedia, citing the work of university researchers, explains that “prior to the 1830s, a majority of U.S. newspapers were aligned with a political party or platform. … This was called partisan press and was not unbiased in opinion.”

The newspapers of the day didn’t pretend to be objective reporters of fact. Their bias was known and accepted. Not a problem.

Today, however, the media, with a few exceptions, try to cover themselves in a veneer of objectivity when in reality they are the modern newsletter of the Democratic Party and the progressive agenda. Those who aren’t part of their tribe are lied to, sneered at, and marginalized by journalists who not only want to establish a political society while killing our civil society, but want to ensure they’re part of the elite that enjoys the privilege and status of power.

From the TV networks to the major daily newspapers to sophomoric gab shows, the media are in the business of lying, covering up and/or ignoring truth that hurts Democrats, instilling fear, creating an environment in which government can more easily control people who already had been freed through revolution, and “othering” and gaslighting dissenters.

As an institution, the press has been almost wholly taken over by a collection of liberty-loathing progressives, resentful leftists, neo-Marxists, aspiring tyrants, busybodies, bitter scolds, elitists, anti-Americans, and angry, juvenile activists – a composition identical to that of the Democratic Party. For those who doubt this, consider the Democrats’ recent proposal to subsidize left-leaning newspapers with taxpayer money.

Enough. 

Afghanistan Was Lost in the Halls of Harvard The 40-year ROTC ban sent a deeper message: that American civilization isn’t worth defending. By Ruth R. Wisse

https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghanistan-withdrawal-lost-harvard-rotc-military-training-ivy-league-elites-patriotism-11632152914?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Postmortems on Afghanistan are still focused on failures of the U.S. military and government, but before moving on, we should explore the more fundamental causes of this debacle.

Maybe because I have spent my life in education, I have always valued the observation, attributed to the Duke of Wellington, that “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” The qualities developed in those British schoolboys produced the soldiering that defeated Napoleon’s forces. Since armies are typically made up of young people who go straight from school to the battlefield, the traits and habits necessary for winning wars must be already ingrained in those we expect to fight them. Afghanistan was lost in the halls of Harvard.

Harvard was the first college to bring the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or ROTC, to campus in 1916. ROTC was established by the U.S. National Defense Act, signed by President Woodrow Wilson. Its purpose, then as now, was to encourage college students to undergo military training as potential officers. Many campus plaques honor Harvard students who fought for their country, but ROTC came under attack in 1968 as part of opposition to the Vietnam War, the draft and the “military-industrial complex.” As the war became unpopular, antagonism toward the military on campus grew.

Both the draft and American involvement in Vietnam ended in 1973. One might have expected the voluntary ROTC to flourish, given that the U.S. still had plenty of enemies, some with dangerous weaponry and aims. Instead, rather than encourage outstanding students to undertake military training as part of their civic responsibility, faculty at Harvard and elsewhere took the lead in banishing ROTC from campus.

By the time I arrived at Harvard to teach in 1993, the ostensible justification for keeping ROTC off campus had shifted from objections to its educational function to rejection of the Clinton-era policy toward gay soldiers. Rather than legitimately opposing “don’t ask, don’t tell” through the political process, faculty used it as moral camouflage for their continuing war on military service.

The finer students saw through it. I fondly recall a student forum in 1999 where a self-described “gay libertarian” mocked the university’s policy, saying that the next pretext would be that recruits were not allowed freedom of speech.

But student conscience and conscientiousness were no match for opposition from the small number of faculty ideologues in the humanities and social sciences—the ones who determine a university’s political agenda because the rest of us are too indifferent or weak to stop them.

The Left’s Descent into Amorality and Barbarism Paul Sturdee

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/society/2021/09/the-left-and-the-decline-of-the-moral-community/

With the emergence of permissive liberalism in the West during the 1960s – much encouraged by the Left – immoral and then amoral conduct became more and more socially acceptable. The abandonment of moral norms in favour of more licentious behaviour is a consequence of widespread public acceptance of the degeneration of society into amorality. This could not happen without the failure of influence of the idea of a moral community of like-minded people, people who see it as their role to perpetuate standards of good conduct that are in danger of being undermined or abandoned altogether. But now, fifty years after the Swinging Sixties, we can see where this has all led. The sexual revolution contributed to the weakening of family ties, as the norm of the extended family gave way to the nuclear family, which then gave way to the single-parent family.3

And now we have the transgender movement seeking to remove from parents any right to object to their child’s manipulation by political activists advocating irreversible life-changing interventions in the name of transgender ‘rights’, promoted and carried out by physicians and counsellors whose role as therapists is deliberately put to serving political ends.4 These activists have abrogated their professional obligation to do no harm, and their ethics have been distorted and eroded such that they now accommodate the doing of irreversible harm to vulnerable children, even against the objections of the parent(s). This is a new form of amorality and barbarism, and it betrays how corrupted the public discourse on moral probity has become.

At root this all comes down to an issue of fundamental moral values, principles, conscience, and character. These are not words you hear or read much in the mainstream media these days, at least not in any meaningful sense. The same applies in education, and in public life. The rhetoric is still occasionally used, but often it rings hollow, lacking meaningful content if the words are used carelessly, as if everyone should know what they mean and so further discussion is unnecessary. 

Medically assisted suicide and abortion and the sanctity of life: Diane Bederman

https://dianebederman.com/medically-assisted-suicide-and-abortion-and-the-sanctity-of-life/

My friend of 50 years died on Tuesday, August 17 at 8:15 AM. It wasn’t a surprise. We were told that she had requested that her life end. Medically assisted suicide. Death with dignity.

I am not against MAID, medically assisted suicide, or abortion, but I fear the slippery slope that we saw with abortion will come to assisted suicide. Almost 7,600 Canadians received medical assistance to end their lives last year, continuing a trend of steady annual increases in cases since the procedure was legalized in 2016.

If we lived in a world where we honoured the sanctity and dignity of all life, perhaps I would not be so fearful. But we don’t live there. Too many have attacked the Judeo/Christian ethic that underpins our way of life. We live in a world that separates essential people from the non-essential in order to permit the destruction of some lives over others. That not only allowed, but commanded, that some people do not have the right to earn a living, to be with loved ones who are dying (talk about death with dignity), to celebrate life. We allowed others to dictate whose businesses will survive and whose could not. We set such restrictions that we allowed opioid overdose to reach all-time highs because too many people lost hope and faith in living. No dignity in those deaths.

We, as a society have shown how easily we will give up the rights of others to protect our own. That is not honouring the sanctity of life.

New iPhone 13 Will Require Vaccination To Unlock Screen Video

https://babylonbee.com/video/10

Join Tim Apple as he reveals iPhone 13. The first phone to force you to be vaccinated… or else. Apple: Think different.

The Left’s War On Comedy Is No Laughing Matter Armando Simón

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/20/the-lefts-war-on-comedy-is-no-joking-matter/

A curious characteristic of totalitarian communist regimes is the dearth, if not the total absence, of comedy. No comedy films were ever made in the Soviet Union or in any of the other Communist countries. In fact, cinemas in communist countries were almost always empty, the films being so mind-numbingly abysmal. (One time in Havana, the government allowed American films to be shown in a theater and the lines stretched around the block, whereupon the government arrested the attendees inside the theater.)

In the Soviet Union, circuses were a major source of popular entertainment, devoid of the usual crude propaganda. The favorite aspect of Soviet circuses were the clowns, when the otherwise unsmiling Russians could let loose with belly laughs.

Yoani Sánchez stated that one of the things that first helped her to break through the indoctrination received at school of the cult of personality of Fidel Castro was her observation that Castro never joked, highly unusual for a Cuban.

We are in the midst of a Marxist upheaval going full throttle towards turning America into a Communist utopia. The symptoms are all there: self-censorship, censorship (aka “cancel culture”), political indoctrination of the military, indoctrination in the schools, network news deliberately becoming propaganda outlets, Balkanizing the population, etc.

Another symptom is the slow strangulation of comics and comedy.

The Enigma of Robert E. Lee By Mackubin Thomas Owens

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/10/04/the-enigma-of-robert-e-lee/#slide-1

“ In a short review, it is impossible to do justice to Guelzo’s splendid work. He has done what we ask biographers to do: provide an incisive look at a complex man, neither secular saint nor moral monster. Of course, complexity is the human condition. Thanks to Allen Guelzo for providing the definitive look at the life of a complex man who mostly deserves our respect.”

Robert E. Lee: A Life, by Allen C. Guelzo (Knopf, 608 pp., $35)

Of all the American icons that have been pushed off their pedestals lately, none has fallen farther and harder than Robert E. Lee. Over the years, Lee was admired by even those who certainly had no sympathy for the cause for which he fought. Long viewed as an exemplar of soldierly virtue, integrity, magnanimity, and humanity, Lee has recently come under relentless attack and his alleged virtues have been called into question.

He was once regarded as not only a regional but even a national hero, a Christian gentleman as well as a magnificent commander who eventually succumbed only to an army with superior resources. Now we are treated to essays such as “The Myth of the Kindly Robert E. Lee,” accusing him of being a racist slave-beater, as well as to denunciations by Army officers such as David Petraeus who, having once lauded him, now dismiss him as a traitor.

Fortunately, Lee is the subject of a new biography by the prolific Allen C. Guelzo, one of our most accomplished Civil War historians and a foremost Lincoln scholar. Guelzo, the senior research scholar at the Council of the Humanities and the director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in Prince­ton’s James Madison Program, is the first three-time winner of the Lincoln Prize, for, among other works, his Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (2005), which remains the definitive treatment of that document.

As a staunch Lincoln man, Guelzo might be expected to join in the Lee-bashing. But that is not his style. He has instead provided a fair treatment, placing Lee’s remarkable life in its proper context. He praises what should be praised and criticizes what should be criticized.

Guelzo seeks to address the “mystery” of Robert E. Lee: How did a man whose character, dignity, rectitude, and composure created a sense of awe in most of those who observed him also exhibit characteristics such as insecurity, petulance, impatience, contempt, and, on at least one occasion, violent anger? Also, how did a man of honor commit the crime of treason?

How Social-Justice Extremists Spawned a Generation of ‘Progressive’ Antisemites   David Bernstein, Nicole Levitt, and Daniel Newman

https://quillette.com/2021/09/17/how-social-justice-extremists-spawned-a-generation-of-progressive-antisemites/

In 2019, the Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) division of Stanford University’s Student Affairs department launched a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training program with a mandate to instruct students about institutional racism. Instead, the program provided a case study of how radicalized forms of social-justice indoctrination can fuel antisemitism.

Earlier this year, Dr Ron Albucher, a Stanford psychiatrist and a former CAPS director, along with his colleague Sheila Levin, an eating-disorder specialist in the same department, filed complaints with federal and state civil-rights agencies regarding what they alleged to be “severe and persistent anti-Jewish harassment.” “Unfortunately, what we found was that the very program meant to help build an inclusive environment for all members of the Stanford community was, in fact, perpetrating the invidious discrimination it sought to eliminate,” wrote the complainants in an open letter published by the Stanford Daily last month.

The dialog-based seminars organized by CAPS were primarily aimed at addressing racial injustice suffered by individuals classified under broad categories, including black, indigenous, and people of color. The organizers used these categories to break participants up into racially segregated “affinity groups.” Albucher and Levin were assigned to the group designated under the label “whiteness accountability.” In the sessions, the pair alleges, seminar committee members “maligned and marginalized Jews by castigating them as powerful and privileged perpetrators who contribute to systemic racism.” Meanwhile, seminar moderators “intentionally overlooked antisemitic incidents” happening on campus.

On one occasion, the DEI group came together for a special session to discuss the “Zoom Bombing” of a Stanford University-wide virtual town hall meeting, which was marred by participants posting racist and antisemitic messages, invoking the N-word and images of swastikas. According to Albucher and Levin:

In the discussion of this event … DEI committee leaders decided to omit the swastikas, stating that they did not want antisemitism to dominate the discussion since Jews are wealthy business owners. When more swastikas were discovered in [Stanford] Memorial Church, DEI facilitators said we would discuss this incident only if time permitted. Yet, there was no further mention of this blatant expression of antisemitism. Failing to even acknowledge the very images used to promote Jewish genocide, especially during a DEI training, is deeply concerning.

The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Milley You see why Tucker Carlson called Milley a “reckless nutcase.” He apparently believes that the military answers to him. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/18/the-wit-and-wisdom-of-mark-milley/

It has been fascinating to follow the recent career of General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an advisory body of military commanders that, by law, lies outside the chain of command. It’s not clear Milley knows that. Being a thoroughly modern major general, he seems to be more interested in blockading “white rage” than honing the fighting skills of our military. 

So I was edified to see that Milley has put down some of his thoughts in a new Art of War. It is a very different sort of book from the Chinese classic by Sun Tzu. 

It is not just that Sun Tzu was interested in winning wars and prevailing over the enemy. He also understood that his country had enemies and that it was important to be able to distinguish effectively between friends and enemies. “I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our weakness for strength,” he wrote in one famous passage, “and thus will turn his strength into weakness.”

Milley has turned that old-fashioned “binary” idea on its head—he deconstructed it, you might say, and implicitly showed how out of sync with our times poor old Sun Tzu is. 

Of course, Sun Tzu did not know about telephones, Twitter, Facebook, or systemic racism, so he would have been unable to comprehend the postmodern wisdom of Milley’s aperçus. “If you think you might attack an enemy,” the general writes, “pick up the phone and give ’em a heads up. It’s only fair.” Brilliant!

Another morsel: “If you surrender, you can never lose.” Why didn’t Sherman or Grant think of that? 

Some of Milley’s wisdom has a very contemporary application, to wit: “When retreating, leave most of your armaments behind so you know what you’ll be up against next time.” Good advice, right? 

The Afghanistization of America  We are doing our best to become a Third-World country of incompetency, constitutional erosion, a fractious and politicized military elite, and racially and ethnically obsessed warring tribes.   By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/19/the-afghanistization-of-america/

The United States should be at its pinnacle of strength. It still produces more goods and services than any other nation—China included, which has a population over four times as large. Its fuel and food industries are globally preeminent, as are its graduate science, computer, engineering, medical, and technology university programs. Its constitution is the oldest of current free nations. And the U.S. military is by far the best funded in the world. And yet something has gone terribly wrong within America, from the southern border to Afghanistan. 

The inexplicable in Afghanistan—surrendering Bagram Air Base in the middle of the night, abandoning tens of billions of dollars of military equipment to the Taliban, and forsaking both trapped Americans and loyalist Afghans—has now become the new Biden model of inattention and incompetence. 

Or to put it another way, when we seek to implant our culture abroad, do we instead come to emulate what we are trying to change?

COVID Chaos

Take COVID-19. Joe Biden in 2020 (along with Kamala Harris) trashed Trump’s impending Operation Warp Speed vaccinations. Then, after inauguration, Biden falsely claimed no one had been vaccinated until his ascension (in fact, 1million a day were being vaccinated before he assumed office). Then again, Biden claimed ad nauseam that he didn’t believe in mandates to force the new and largely experimental vaccinations on the public. Then, once more, he promised that they were so effective and so many Americans had received vaccines that by July 4 the country would return to a virtual pre-COVID normality. 

Then came the delta variant and his self-created disaster in Afghanistan. 

To divert his attention away from the Afghan morass, Biden weirdly focused on an equally confused new presidential COVID-19 mandate, seeking to subject federal employees, soldiers, and employees of larger firms to mandatory vaccinations—right as the contagious delta variant seemed to be slowly tapering off, given the millions who have either been vaxxed, have developed natural immunity, or both.

Consider other paradoxes. American citizens must be vaccinated, but not the forecasted 2 million noncitizens expected to cross the southern border illegally into the United States over the current fiscal year. Soldiers who bravely helped more than 100,000 Afghan refugees escape must be vaccinated, but not the unvetted foreign nationals from a premodern country? 

Scientists now are convinced naturally acquired COVID-19 immunity from a previous infection likely provides longer and better protection than does any of the current vaccinations. 

Yet those who suffered COVID-19, and now have antibodies and other natural defenses, must likewise be vaccinated. That anomaly raises the obvious logical absurdities: will those with vaccinations—in reciprocal fashion—be forced to be exposed to the virus to obtain additional and superior natural immunity, given the Biden logic of the need for both acquired and vaccinated immunity?