RUTHFULLY YOURS

After a hiatus from my columns, one enforced by the necessity of writing, without distraction, my latest Cyrus Skeen mystery novel, Silver Screens, set in the Hollywood milieu (but not in Hollywood itself), it is appropriate that I return with the review of a book about the early American novel, Philip F. Gura’s Truth’s Ragged Edge: The Rise of the American Novel, which traces the beginnings of the literary form in this country and discusses its largely religious nature and later anti-American nature. He covers roughly the century just prior to the American Revolution up to the mid- to late 19th century.

Gura discusses such better known novelists as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, and reveals that they, too, experimented with, if not endorsed, the kind of “self-fulfillment” dramatized by their lesser known colleagues in the realm of fiction. Many of the novelists Gura discusses aren’t even on Wikipedia’s list of known 19th century writers.

All novels are “morality tales” of one kind or another, including Silver Screens. The difference, however, between Silver Screens and virtually every novel discussed by Gura is that the morality in Silver Screens is integrated with the action, whereas the morality and action in these early novels are rarely integrated and are paragons of what novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand called the soul-body dichotomy. That is, the morality is not reason-based and so is at odds with man’s nature and with reality itself.

20th Knesset. With almost all the ballots counted for Israel’s general election held today, the ruling Likud party of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has scored a dramatic and decisive victory over the rival Zionist Union party

99% of votes have been counted from a total of 4,223,057 and Likud is in first place with 23.29 percent. Zionist Union is trailing far behind in second place with 18.76 percent, almost 5 percentage points behind Likud. (Media and Polls caught lying through their wishful thinking teeth once again)

The results give Netanyahu 29 seats in Israel’s Knesset, a full 5 more than the Zionist Union with 24. The tally significantly exceeds exit poll results which showed the two parties in a dead heat.

The United Arab List is in third place at 10.95 percent or 14 seats, followed by the centrist Yesh Atid with 8.78 percent or 11 seats and Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu with 7.42 percent or 10 seats. Bayit Yehudi now holds 6.40 percent or 8 seats, Shas has 5.82 percent or 7 seats, Yisrael Beiteinu has 5.17 percent or 6 seats, and United Torah Judaism has 5.18 percent.

Politicians should stop referring to the President of the United States as “the Commander-in-Chief,” as he is often referred to. Most recently, Hillary Clinton, whom I admire, said the following about Republican senators who wrote an open letter to Iran:

“Either these senators were trying to be helpful to the Iranians or harmful to the Commander-in-Chief in the midst of high-stakes international diplomacy.”

But the president is not the Commander-in-Chief for purposes of diplomatic negotiations. This characterization mistakenly implies that President Obama — or any president — is our Commander, and that his decisions should receive special deference. This is a misreading of our constitution, which creates a presidency that is subject to the checks and balances of co-equal branches of the government. The president is only the commander in chief of “the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.” This provision was intended to assure civilian control over the military and to serve as a check on military power.

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Dr. Mark Christian, the President and Executive Director of the Global Faith Institute (GFI). He is an Egyptian-born Christian convert from Sunni Islam and is related to high-ranking leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. (Learn more about his background and contemporary battle with the Muslim Brotherhood here.)

He came on the show to discuss the pro-Israel evening he is hosting in Omaha, “Israel in the Heartland,” on March 19 to honor Israel. It is the first ever pro-Zionist event to be held in the United States heartland and the state of Nebraska:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/frontpagemag-com/ex-sunni-imam-hosts-pro-israel-evening-in-omaha-on-the-glazov-gang/

Organizations, whether in the public sector or private sector, tend to issue press releases for many purposes, but most often it is for public relations.

Federal agencies, including ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), routinely issue press releases that tout their successes to convince the public that the money that is appropriated by Congress has been well spent.

I plan to periodically write commentaries to dissect significant ICE press releases and shed light on the truth behind those press releases. The most effective weapon we have in our arsenal to make our government accountable is the ability to ask the best questions we can. Questions are most impactful when they are based on knowledge and, indeed, it has been said that you can more readily determine the intelligence of a person by the questions he/she asks rather that the answers that the person provides.

Next month, Armenians worldwide will mark the centennial of the Armenian Holocaust that saw 1.5 million of their people perish barbarically at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in a jihad that is continuing today under the Islamic State. This destruction of the Armenians in Anatolia, where they had lived for several thousand years, was also the event that gave Hitler reason to believe he could get away with exterminating Jews, Poles and Gypsies.

“Who still remembers today the annihilation of the Armenians?” the Nazi leader reportedly said.

The trauma of 1915 left deep scars on the Armenian psyche, similar to those the Nazi Holocaust made on that of the world’s Jews. As a result, one would think the Obama administration would show an increased sensitivity regarding the killing of Armenians, especially by Muslim enemies, and more especially in view of the approaching Armenian Holocaust’s centenary in April. But only last month, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland urged Armenian authorities to make “a humanitarian gesture” and release two Azeri terrorists who had crossed the border from Azerbaijan and murdered two people, one a 17-year-old. A third Armenian, a woman, was badly wounded.

s vote tallying came to a close Wednesday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party emerged as the clear victor in the Israeli election, besting the runner-up Zionist Union party headed by the Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog and his running mate, Tzipi Livni. As a result, Netanyahu has gained the upper hand in forming the country’s next coalition government.

The election reflected polling done in December, when Netanyahu appeared to have a comfortable lead following his call for new elections, due to opposition within the current coalition government. Just prior to the election, however, Netanyahu’s Likud party trailed the left-of-center Zionist Union, a party whose platform centered around a wish to resume negotiations with the Palestinians. If they had emerged victorious, Herzog and Livni would have split the four year term, with Herzog serving the first two years and Livni the second two.

Hear the call of the minaret, that inspiring melody in multiculturalism’s wonderful harmony? And how about those ‘Muslim women only’ sessions at the municipal pool, which ratepayers of all faiths (and none) paid for? Well guess what: the architects of Islam’s inexorable expansion love them even more.

Australia is in a war with Islamism it knows little about, blinded for years by political correctness, wilful ignorance and capitulation, especially under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd administrations. For nearly fifteen years, the co-ordinated assault on Western civilization by global Islamism has been intensifying. It is being carried out in accordance with the strategy mapped out in The Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase (1990), which in turn is based on the mysterious document Towards a World Strategy for Political Islam (a.k.a. ‘The Project’), which was prepared in 1982 by the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood as a blueprint for their global strategy for Islamist supremacy. It came to light after police raided a Swiss Bank in November 2001.

Feminism originated as a struggle for equal rights. It started with voting rights, then expanded to include the dismantling of laws and customs that assumed women were incapable of running their own lives, and so had to be subjected to male overseers. The goal was to achieve for women their autonomy in world with a level social-economic-political playing field. In short, feminism was about achieving the liberal democratic good of individuals with autonomy, human rights, and the equality of opportunity to rise according to their abilities.

Shifting social mores, technological innovations, and an expanding economy laid the groundwork for the triumph of what is called “equity feminism” starting in the 1960s. But that was the same time feminism took a sharp turn away from classical liberalism into the illiberal precincts of cultural Marxism, identity politics, grievance-mongering, progressive political advocacy, and New Age silliness like the mythic “women’s way of knowing.” The result today has been the transformation of equity feminism into a subsidiary of a progressive ideology that cares more for political and personal power than equal opportunity for all women. Hillary Clinton’s career exemplifies this change.

A federal court has struck a blow for the First Amendment by ordering Philadelphia’s public transit system to accept an eye-opening ad that spotlights Islamic Jew-hatred and urges the United States to cut off foreign aid to Muslim countries.

The hard-hitting public service announcement, which contains a photograph of a real-life meeting between Adolf Hitler and Muslim leader and Nazi collaborator Hajj Amin al-Husseini, is sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which was co-founded by conservative leader and blogger Pamela Geller. AFDI sued and placed the ad in New York City and Washington, D.C. public transit systems after litigating the matter in court. It has also attempted to place ads in transit systems in Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, San Francisco, and elsewhere.

It’s just the latest in a string of legal victories for Geller.

For example, in 2012 Geller won her legal fight to post an anti-Islamist ad in the New York City subway system. Quoting Ayn Rand, the ad read, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” The ad was a response to ads in the NYC subway promoting Islam and others accusing Israel of a number of things including being an obstacle to peace in the Middle East.