NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

DEFAME AND PUNISH: CHRISTOPHER RUFO-

Posted By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/defame-and-punish

How left-wing NGOs mobilize private and public assets to silence critics

The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project recently procured a cache of government documents that expose a disturbing pattern: left-wing NGOs seeking to mobilize the state against political opponents on specious accusations of “violent extremism.”

According to the report, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) urged Washington State’s “unified counterterrorism” center to investigate me, Daily Wire host Matt Walsh, and social-media influencer Libs of TikTok, under the false pretext that our reporting on gender theory in schools and transgender medical interventions constitutes “hate,” “extremism,” and “violence.”

The campaign to mobilize law enforcement against critics of gender ideology or critical race theory is not a limited affair. The ADL and a related organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), have developed it as a scalable, repeatable tactic to silence political opponents.

The playbook is simple. The SPLC and ADL paint a target on an individual critic, then mobilize a decentralized network of private and public assets to degrade, censor, and punish that target. On the private side, the groups activate left-wing journalists to smear the target in the press, demand that social media companies censor the target’s online speech, and encourage left-wing editors to denigrate the target on his Wikipedia page. On the public side, the groups send notices to state and federal law enforcement, hoping to mobilize the government to open investigations and intimidate critics with the threat of state repression, even incarceration.

Sometimes it works. The SPLC and ADL have damaged the reputations of innocent journalists, driven negative media coverage against mainstream conservative groups, and influenced social media firms’ censorship policies. Seeing the success of this model, other left-wing pressure groups have followed suit, demanding full-scale state repression. The National School Boards Association, for example, persuaded the Biden administration to mobilize the FBI’s counterterrorism division against parents who opposed critical race theory.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Jonathan Clarke Why Regis Endures The New York Catholic school represents the best of secondary education.

Posted By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/why-regis-high-school-endures

The late journalist Christopher Hitchens grew up middle class in the economically sclerotic England of the 1970s. “If there’s going to be an upper class in this country,” he reports his mother saying, “Christopher is going to be in it.” He won a scholarship to a good “public” school (meaning private and exclusive, in the British parlance), went on to Oxford, and launched a dazzling literary career. Hitchens’s mother did not herself grow up in privilege, but she had figured out how the world worked.

On January 23, Regis High School, a small Jesuit institution on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, sent acceptance letters to approximately 135 eighth-graders in and around the five boroughs. The letters will change the trajectories of these students’ lives, and perhaps the destinies of their families in the bargain. Regis, which operates tuition-free owing principally to the largesse of a wealthy Catholic philanthropist (known to Regians as “The Benefactress”) who endowed the school in 1912, gives priority in admissions to promising young men who otherwise would not be able to afford a Jesuit education. (The school continues to raise additional money privately.) Its hope is that scholarship recipients will become leaders in their communities—in the words of the school’s mission statement, “men for others.”

Regis achieves extraordinary results. Former Marine officer and recent National Book Award winner Phil Klay is a Regis graduate, as was legendary book publisher Robert Giroux, Nobel Prize in Medicine winner John O’Keefe, several federal judges of the Southern District of New York and Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and current Houston Astros pitcher Declan Cronin. Nearly 20 percent of Regis graduates are accepted by an Ivy League college; many more attend highly ranked “Ivy-adjacent” schools. Such access to elite college education may be purchased elsewhere in New York City for $50,000 a year or more in private school tuition. At Regis, it may be had by achieving a high score on a scholarship exam, along with excellent grades and letters of recommendation—and in no other way. Regis turns away calls from alumni, donors, prominent New Yorkers, and anyone else trying to put a thumb on the scale in the admissions process.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

From ‘Never Trump’ to ‘Encore’ By J.W. Verret

Posted By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-was-a-never-trumper-but-biden-is-worse-2024-election-presidency-b734801b

In 2019 I wanted him impeached. Now I’ve become convinced that Biden is worse.

I called for President Trump’s impeachment in 2019. I stand by what I said then. But if Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee, I will vote for him in November.

Like many voters in 2020, I hoped Joe Biden would govern reasonably from the center. Instead, his administration has sought the furthest reaches of leftist ideology. What were once fringe progressive talking points have become national policy. Even the military has been infected with a divisive and unyielding woke doctrine. The economic landscape has been equally distressing: inflation, coupled with a ballooning national debt and deficit. Four more years of this means a bleak future for my children.

My work in financial regulation and cryptocurrency has shown me the havoc wrought by policies seemingly chosen not to foster economic growth but to appease the likes of Elizabeth Warren, who has enjoyed outsize influence over Mr. Biden’s nominations. One nominee to run the leading banking regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, was an open member of Marxist groups and called for the Federal Reserve to provide retail bank accounts. It took a few brave Democrats to stop her nomination.

Before, I didn’t embrace the rallying cry of “Build the wall.” Yet the crisis at our border compels me to acknowledge that Mr. Trump was right. The border situation underlines a broader reality—we need practical policies, not politically expedient ones. Mr. Trump doesn’t care about the niceties of political discourse, and that is an asset.

I find myself parting ways with the Never Trump faction. I respect its stance, which was born of conviction. Yet our situation demands a re-evaluation. We can continue down a path that has led to division and economic stagnation, or pivot to a future that, while imperfect, promises governance rooted in traditional American values, economic liberty and a judiciary cut from the same cloth as the gifted nominees confirmed to the Supreme Court under Mr. Trump.

Count me as a former Never Trumper. Given the coming election, the Never Trump position is naive. No third-party candidate can win and heal America. It’s time to pick a side, and Mr. Trump is the only alternative to Mr. Biden’s hyperprogressive vision for America.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Hundred Days after Gaza’s October 7 (Part 2 of 4) Inconvenient History from the SS Einsatzgruppen to Hamas by Gwythian Prins

Posted By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20338/ss-einsatzgruppen-to-hamas

The BBC has used UNRWA voices — preferably, it seems, antipodean ones — as purportedly objective third-party commentators. That is deeply irresponsible journalism, and the BBC most likely knows why that is so.

Thus, according to the Covenant and echoing the Mufti in 1943… there is not, and cannot anywhere be a Jewish state in this world. It is what is written: here we are told that Jews in Palestine are incompatible with ‘true statehood’ and the Mufti will tell us that it is Allah’s will that Jews shall be forever stateless.

It is important to remember [GP1] that these are thrice legitimate Jewish lands: once from original patrimony; once by international mandate and the third time by force of arms after successfully countering assaults in 1948, 1967 and 1973. Anti-Semitic exceptionalism, however, means that only the Jewish state is not allowed to enjoy the peace of victory that winning wars brings to other nations.

Ever since the Abraham Accords were adopted on 15th September 2020, many regional states have shown that they would prefer to skirt around the ever-rejectionist “Palestinians” and to normalise relations with the amazing mighty midget Israel, which is the region’s creative powerhouse in every cultural and technological domain, as well as, by necessity, its dominant military power. Most significantly that includes the Saudis, whom the Ayatollahs have declared their sworn enemies.

In his platform speech, [the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin] al-Husseini responded by stating that Germany “… understood the Jews perfectly and decided to find a final solution to the Jewish menace,” and… “…Allah has determined that there never will be a stable arrangement for the Jews, and that no state should be established for them.”

Thus, in anti-Semitic ideology…the inconvenient history which can be traced in evidence from the SS liquidation task forces –- the Einsatzgruppen — to Hamas, is detailed, documented and direct.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

It Is Not Texas That’s Defying the Law — It’s Biden Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/it-is-not-texas-thats-defying-the-law-its-biden/

There is a great deal of moronic commentary accusing the State of Texas of defying the Supreme Court. In point of fact, the Supreme Court did not order Texas to do anything. It vacated an order by the Fifth Circuit that, during the pendency of an ongoing lawsuit between the feds and the state, barred federal authorities from cutting concertina wire that Texas has installed in parts of its 1,254-mile border with Mexico. That is, the Supreme Court (with no opinion, and over the objection of four justices, who also did not write) held that, for now, the lower courts may not prevent the federal authorities from dismantling barriers.

That Supreme Court action did not to direct Texas to do anything. The Court did not presume to tell Texas that it could not take action to protect its territory and exclude intruders — to have done so would have been constitutionally dubious for the reasons Justice Antonin Scalia explained nearly a dozen years ago in his Arizona v. United States opinion — which Governor Gregg Abbott has explicitly relied on, and which should be read, reread, and memorized. (Note: Abbott described the 2012 Scalia opinion as a “dissent”; it actually concurred in part and dissented in part with the Court’s multilayered decision.)

There is no doubt that the federal and state governments both have immigration- and border-enforcement authority. How they work out disputes, particularly under circumstances in which no attempt has been made by Congress in statutory law to prevent the lawful defensive measures Texas has taken, is a political question. This is vertical rather than horizontal separation of powers — collision between federal and state authority rather than presidential and congressional authority — but the dynamic is similar: The law’s preference is for the political officials who answer to the people whose lives are deeply affected to work it out.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The end of the world is not around the corner Environmental predictions about the End Times have a long and embarrassing history. Fraser Myers

Posted By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/01/26/the-end-of-the-world-is-not-around-the-corner/

The end of the world is in sight. Hell on Earth is around the corner. Or at least that’s the impression you get from the overheated predictions that are continually made about the climate these days.

Today, we’re told the world is no longer reckoning with mere climate change, but with ‘climate catastrophe’. Not global warming, but ‘global boiling’. A ‘mass extinction event’ is upon us, says Greta Thunberg. ‘I am talking about the slaughter, death and starvation of six billion people this century’, warns Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, who dubiously claims that he has ‘the science’ to back this up. The ‘collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon’, insists David Attenborough. Scarier still, the narrow window for saving humanity from eco-armaggeddon is apparently always just about to close shut. Or so scientists and activists say.

These kinds of predictions come cloaked in the authority of science. They’re given a huge amount of weight by well-credentialed academics and venerable institutions. But that is no guarantee that they will come true. To put it lightly.

Indeed, predictions of environmental doom have been made before – and they have been very, very wrong before. According to some of the earliest luminaries of the modern environmental movement, we should probably all be dead already. It seems we’ve actually been living in the End Times for a very long time now.

The scientific consensus around global warming didn’t fully emerge until the 1980s. Nevertheless, environmental scientists have always been convinced that changes in the climate could pose an existential threat to humanity. Ironically, in the 1960s and 1970s, some scientists were more concerned about the alleged threat of global cooling than they were about warming. ‘Are we heading for an ice age?’, the Sunday Telegraph asked in 1979.

The potential for the world’s ecosystems to collapse has long kept environmentalists awake at night.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

NYU Professor Tells Students of Hamas Atrocities: ‘We Know It’s Not True’ By Francesca Block

Posted By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/nyu-prof-tells-students-hamas-atrocities-untrueu?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

An adjunct NYU professor denied reports that the terrorist group Hamas beheaded babies and raped women in Israel on October 7, telling a group of students last month: “We know it’s not true.”

“We live in a Zionist city,” Amin Husain added at the December 5 “teach-in” organized by Students for Justice in Palestine at The New School, according to a video obtained by The Free Press. “No, let’s be real about this, let’s be fucking real.”

He went on to joke about his reputation for being antisemitic, citing a petition launched by an NYU alumnus on October 17, 2023, calling for his dismissal: “I have a petition going around, right, because I’m antisemitic. I won the honors of antisemitic multiple times.”

In the video, taken from the livestream of the event, Husain sits behind a table, wearing a keffiyeh and woolly hat while speaking to a classroom of students who remain quietly attentive as he comments on what he calls the “Palestinian liberation struggle.” A former finance lawyer, Husain jokes that his profile on the site Canary Mission, which documents people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel, and Jews, “is one of the best biographies I have.”

Husain’s Canary Mission bio states that he has “organized multiple violent New York City disruptions, promoted hatred of America and the police and incited hatred against pro-Israel supporters with Within Our Lifetime (WOL), an anti-Israel activist group in New York.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Two Americas The rich, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted, are different. Mark Tapson

Posted By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-two-americas-2/

This just in: the ruling class hates your freedoms.

The Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CUP), a D.C.-based nonprofit advocacy group led by Steve Forbes and economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, released a report this month announcing the findings of a Rasmussen poll which confirms what the “average” American already knew: the elites, to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, are different. What the average American may not already know is just how much of an existential threat to freedom the ruling class is.

CUP calls the report, titled “The Two Americas and How the Nation’s Elite is Out of Touch with Average Americans,” a “first-of-its-kind look at the views of the American Elite.” This report is based upon two separate Rasmussen surveys of 1,000 members of the elite class conducted last September. It defined the elites as people having at least one post-graduate degree, earning at least $150,000 annually, and living in high-population density areas (more than 10,000 people per square mile in their zip code). They represent a mere 1% of the U.S. population, but of course they have a disproportionate degree of power and influence, not least in terms of the topics and views that dominate public policy and the national conversation.

“These results confirm what people have long suspected,” the report states. “Today, there are two Americas.” As the authors write in their executive summary,

The people who run America, or at least think they do, live in a bubble of their own construction. They’ve isolated themselves from everyday America’s realities to such a degree their views about what is and what should be happening in this country differ widely from the average American’s.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Google Sharpens Its Censorship Knives — Labels Trump Praise As ‘Dangerous’

Posted By on January 26th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/26/google-sharpens-its-censorship-knives-labels-trump-praise-as-dangerous/

We recently discovered that Google’s ad-serving network is blocking its ads from appearing on a story we published almost exactly three years ago.

Google declared that the article violated its terms of service because it contained “Dangerous or derogatory content,” which it defines as anything that:

incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.
harasses, intimidates, or bullies an individual or group of individuals.
threatens or advocates for harm to oneself or others.
relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative, scientific consensus.
exploits others through extortion.

Pretty raunchy stuff, in other words.

So what was the article that it flagged? “Trump’s Top-10 Triumphs: A Last Look At A Remarkable Presidency.”

We are not kidding.

BOOKS Comments turned off

TWO RECOMMENDED BOOKS

Posted By on January 26th, 2024

Loss and grief are equal opportunity predators. Two friends have written books which resonate with all who have mourned a loss of beloved parents, spouses, children and dear friends. “Everything is a Little Broken” is a poignant novel by Rebecca Sugar about the sorrow, and even humor when confronted by a father’s crumbling health. Warren Kozak’s “Waving Goodby” is about losing his lovely and loving wife after a grim diagnosis, extraordinary efforts to cure her and reinventing his life alone. Both will be available in February and April respectively. rsk

 

Waving Goodbye: Life After Loss

by Warren Kozak

To those around me—my friends, my colleagues, even my daughter—I appear normal, but in one very fundamental way, I am not.

The old me left with my wife. I’m not sure who this new person is—I am still evolving. But I will tell you this with absolute certainty: I am not the same person I was before my wife died on January 1, 2018.

For anyone struggling with the loss of a spouse—anyone whose world has been turned upside down in a way they’ve never encountered before—here is something that could help. Waving Goodbye is a candid, honest, and approachable guide to dealing with the death of a spouse written by a very ordinary guy who has lived through the ordeal.

Warren Kozak doesn’t just tell you that time heals all wounds; he explains how the passage of time actually helped. Despite the shattering heartbreak and insurmountable grief, Kozak shares what worked, what didn’t, and the insights he learned along the way to help anyone who has suffered this kind of loss.

 

Everything Is a Little Broken Paperback – February 27, 2024

by Rebecca Sugar

Aging is hard, but watching those you love get older isn’t much easier.

What do you do when the people you love are declining right in front of your eyes? What can you do but rage at all that is cruel, laugh at all that is absurd, and show up for whatever happens next?

Mira Cayne’s father has been in physical decline for decades, ever since his spinal cord injury at the age of forty-four. He was never the dad who ran a marathon, but he was the strongest and most resilient man Mira knew. Now, at seventy-nine, Matt Frank is recovering from his second surgery, and Mira can see a change in him. The compounding effects of old age and his infirmity are taking a toll on his fighting spirit, and Mira is trying to be strong for them both. She isn’t sure she is up to the task.

As Matt heals, his fragile condition produces daily indignities that offer the father and daughter a choice: to laugh or to cry. Luckily for Mira, she is built just like her father, and there is no doubt which choice they will make.