RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.american.com/archive/2013/january/the-gop-must-lead-again-on-civil-rights

From its anti-slavery roots to the battles for justice in the 1950s and early 1960s, the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights. Only after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did the Democratic Party get in on the action, giving up on its historical base in the South to court minority voters in the North. Since then, the GOP has not reduced its commitment to civil rights, but it has emphasized them by fighting for personal freedom, individual empowerment, and protection from government; meanwhile, Democrats expanded government to push for more equality of outcomes, group rights, and protection by government. Somehow the Democrats managed to portray their version as the only approach to civil rights, and to saddle Republicans with the historical sins of the Democrats: segregation, discrimination, disenfranchisement, and repression.

There are three important civil rights issues today that the GOP should lead on. They are each sound public policy. Their first and most direct impact will be improving the lives of minorities, but they will also have widespread economic benefits for everybody. They are clearly in synch with Republican values, particularly the libertarian part of the Republican coalition. And they would be extremely popular, making them good politics, particularly amongst a demographic Republicans are now losing badly. But the GOP has failed to frame these as civil rights issues and place them at the core of its party platform, partly resulting from a belief that Democrats already “own” civil rights as an issue, partly due to some less-libertarian Republicans disagreeing with the proposals, and partly because some of the changes, while consistent with small government, feel a bit too radical for those embracing the label “conservative.”

There have been many articles since the election by pundits detailing how the GOP must change. Clearly I’m now writing one too. But there is a difference. Many of these articles can be summarized as, “If the GOP would only move to all of my positions it would be so much better.” In contrast, I’ve only chosen issues where I think it’s reasonable to ask my party to move. There are other issues where it might be politically expedient for the GOP to change, and I desire these changes myself, but I would not ask it. For instance, after the election, many have written about how the GOP must move to the center on social issues. That would be welcome to me as I am not a social conservative. I’m pro-gay marriage and have actively supported groups trying to advance this cause, and I am generally pro-choice. But to ask members of my party to change on the issues many find sacrosanct is a bridge too far. I accept that both parties are coalitions and I will never find full agreement with anyone other than myself (some days even that feels ambitious). Rather, I have chosen issues where, after what I assume will be considerable debate, there is hope we can come together based on the GOP’s avowed small government, free enterprise principles.

We are allowed to attempt to skew immigration toward skills we need, or at least away from those who immigrate not to join our free enterprise system, but to immediately partake in our safety net.

Issue #1 is immigration. The hysteria of some Republicans on this issue, with threats of excommunication for straying from the party line (which I guess I now risk — though as a donor, not a politician, I suspect they will continue to take my money!), is counterproductive. Immigration is, and always has been, a huge positive for our country. Every Republican who talks about the American Dream should know it is a tale of immigration. There are those who deserve the label RINO, but it’s those who would compromise our small government principles for power, not those who wish to allow millions of hard working freedom-seekers to pursue the American Dream.

More and easier immigration does not have to be a free-for-all. We are allowed to protect our borders. We are allowed to attempt to skew immigration toward skills we need, or at least away from those who immigrate not to join our free enterprise system, but to immediately partake in our safety net. We are allowed, to some extent, to protect our culture and encourage new immigrants to assimilate like generations before them have done. Republicans should continue to advocate for these things. But, speaking bluntly, too often the GOP’s boisterous opposition to most things immigrant comes across as racist, even if that’s not the intent. To the extent that this is a misunderstanding, and much of it assuredly is, it has to be fixed. To the extent that it is a reality, and at least a small part of it sadly must be, our party should unequivocally repudiate it, as Democrats should repudiate some very similar anti-immigrant attitudes found in some parts of their ranks.

Of course the most contentious issue surrounding immigration is what to do with the illegals who are already here. I use a simple test when thinking about this issue. Would I commit the crime (and it is a crime) these people committed to make my family’s life better? I would in a heartbeat. If I were Jean Valjean, I’d have stolen that loaf of bread. Frankly, if you would not have done these things for your family, I have no use for you. This is not always the test we want to use in matters of law. If I can understand how an aggrieved father would take vengeance on the person he thinks murdered his child, it does not mean the law should always forgive his actions. But in the case of illegal immigration I think the empathic course is the reasonable one. To punish people harshly for doing precisely what I would do in their situation is a hypocrisy I cannot endorse.

Now, the riposte to this is a fair one: “What about those who immigrated legally? Is it fair that illegals, who indeed broke our laws, get the same benefits as those who followed the legal path?” Of course that is not fair. I will leave the specifics for others on another day, but surely there is a path to legality for illegals that is considerably more generous and humanitarian than the current situation, but still a substantially tougher path than that of legal immigrants.

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5952 The skeet shooter among the pigeons Barack Obama is really just one of the guys. He wants to take away Joe Sixpack’s guns, but he wants everybody to know that he’s a shooter and intends to keep his own shootin’ iron. Mr. Obama hunts pigeons, not deer or ducks or even pigeons with feathers, […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3564/anna-baltzer Anna Baltzer — apparently neither a Fulbright Scholar, nor a descendant of Holocaust survivors, nor an alumna of the Birthright Program — appears to be just a fraud and a fabulist. So why is Oxford having her speak January 31st? Anna Baltzer, a pretty lady who heads the US Campaign to End the Israeli […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3562/global-zero-nuclear-weapons Senator Hagel, while signing up to the timetable for the elimination of all nuclear weapons, also said in the 2009 Al Jazeera interview, that nuclear weapons can be abolished because they no longer need to play a traditional deterrent role. As part of this strategy, Hagel proposes to “de-alert” our weapons, making them unusable […]

http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/bookman/article/hope-or-despair/ ROGER KIMBALL’S BOOK THE FORTUNES OF PERMANENCE-CULTURE AND ANARCHY IN AN AGE OF AMNESIA IS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I READ IN 2012. PLEASE ALSO READ: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-fortunes-of-permanence-culture-and-anarchy-in-an-age-of-amnesia For those who cherish the life of the mind, one of the saddest events of 2012 was the death of the great historian Jacques Barzun. If […]

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p19188.xml

“How about a Secretary Hagel on what Hillary Clinton astonishingly described in her otherwise appallingly uninformative swan-song appearance on Capitol Hill last week: the menace posed to us and our allies by “the global jihadist threat.” Never mind that Mrs. Clinton has done little, if anything, to evince such concernover the past four years – or, for that matter, during the preceding decade-plus she spent in the Senate and White House. In fact, along with President Obama’s pick for the next CIA Director, John Brennan, and his new White House Chief of Staff, Dennis McDonough, she has been one of the prime-movers behind the administration’s efforts to deny jihad’s plain meaning, namely holy war, and to submit to at least its stealthy, subversive and pre-violent version as practiced by the Muslim Brotherhood.”

In the run-up to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s hearing this Thursday on Chuck Hagel’s fitness to become the next Secretary of Defense, its members have been treated to the spectacle of the nominee spinning at the RPM of a prima ballerina.

Evidently, the former Nebraska senator has very low regard for those now serving in the Senate. He seems confident that they will either not see through – or at least not object to – his concerted efforts to: disavow his well-documented public record; obscure his serial, faulty judgments; and ignore the harm both suggest he is prepared to do, if confirmed, to the national security.

The question is: Will Mr. Hagel’s cynical and contemptuous gambit be rewarded by the Senate? Or will it be properly repudiated?

For example, will the Armed Services Committee membership really accept Mr. Hagel’s current insistence that he is a strong supporter of Israel when the evidence to the contrary is manifest from his plethora of votes, resolutions, letters, and public statements? Will Senators on and off that committee trust him to execute Obama administration policy towards Iran’s nuclear threat – which their colleague, Sen. John Kerry, last week insisted was “prevention, not containment” – given his longstanding opposition to both meaningful economic sanctions and military action?

Can legislators who are alarmed at the hollowing-out of the U.S. military now becoming ever more palpable really take at face value Sen. Hagel’s current assurances about his commitment to a strong U.S. military? After all, prior to his nomination by President Obama and his attendant “confirmation conversions,” Mr. Hagel insisted that the Pentagon budget is bloated and can safely be “pared.”

Now, Hillary Clinton might ask, “What’s the difference?” Unfortunately, the difference could be a Secretary of Defense who will actively encourage, rather than steadfastly oppose, the devastation arising from: the elimination, or dramatic slowing, of virtually all Pentagon modernization programs; the reduction in maintenance of worn-out weapon systems and other equipment; the dissipation of much of what is left of the defense industrial base; the evisceration of training and other benefits, etc.

Then there is Senator Hagel’s stance on nuclear disarmament. Last May, the would-be Defense Secretary affirmed his sympathy for arms control schemes that amount to prescriptions for unilateral reductions in our deterrent forces by co-authoring a plan for achieving them sponsored by the Global Zero initiative. In so doing, as Heritage Foundation fellow Rebecca Heinrich’s has noted in the Daily Caller, he signed onto the fatuous idea that “security is mainly a state of mind, not a physical condition.” He recommended that the United States eliminate two out of three “legs” of its strategic Triad. And he called for steep cuts in the short-range nuclear weapons that are the backbone of the “nuclear umbrella” our allies have long relied upon for extended deterrence. The effect would be to undermine global stability and exacerbate proliferation.

http://EconWarfare. News reports on the surge of violence in countries afflicted by the Arab Spring are bewildering, averting the Western readers’ attention from the economic hardship it has generated. While the U.S. and its Western allies were mostly cheering on the sidelines and their media supported the revolution, little, if any attention was paid to […]

Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon, by Clemens Heni (Berlin: Edition Critic, 2013). A publication of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/01/22/antisemitism-a-specific-phenomenon-review/

“As time went on … the Nazis not only became the source of power and wealth and the seekers after Germany’s greatness, but also learned how to handle footnotes and quotations…Hitler was aware of the necessity of presenting anti-Jewish ideology in a scholarly coating.…By 1935 he had succeeded. Within a few years, the fight against the Jews was no more confined to shabby tracts by unknown authors; it had made its entrance into the respectable academic world of Germany.”

– Max Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors (YIVO/Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1946).

Clemens Heni is a young German scholar who has undertaken the Herculean task of throwing back the assault on Holocaust memory that is currently carried on “mostly in the ivory towers of esoteric academia” by activist professors (who demonstrate the explosive power of boredom). Himself a PhD in political science from Innsbruck and currently Director of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Heni pays particular attention to the ignorance as well as tendentiousness of the learned. “We are currently facing a …movement around the globe to distort the history of the Second World War and to deny the uniqueness and unprecedented character of the Holocaust…. Many scholars…seem to have a clear mission: universalizing the Holocaust and denying its specific anti-Jewish character.” Heni shows, in this vast and discriminating critical survey of the campaign to make murdered European Jews into metaphors for both humanity in
general and Palestinian Arabs in particular, that it would be dangerous to think of academics as harmless drudges who know so much about so little that they cannot be contradicted, nor are worth contradicting. Drudges they may be; harmless they are not. Their aims are not scholarly, but political—and often murderous.

http://EconWarfare.org The U.S. appears to acknowledge the economic and political mess that the last two years have brought to the Arab world and Africa generally in high-flown rhetoric devoid of reference to American interests. But things appear to be getting much worse quickly. We have been watching it accelerating in Libya and Syria, the Maghreb […]

Don Irvine — January 28, 2013 Accuracy in Media, AIM, In a wide ranging interview with The New Republic, President Obama turned media critic when he blamed Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for what he called the “nasty atmosphere” in Washington. Obama was responding to a question about whether or not there were Republicans that […]