Why, Despite Good Intentions, Ken Burns’s “The U.S. and the Holocaust” Fails by Ruth R. Wisse

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Focusing on America’s failures to save more Jews in the Holocaust unintentionally strengthens the forces that would threaten Jews today. Here’s how.

Among those excited by the announcement that America’s leading documentary filmmaker had produced a three-part series on the Holocaust were sectors of the Jewish community that have long insisted on the need for all Americans to learn about this subject. Who better suited for this task than Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, known for their well-crafted, carefully researched historical projects? Not only could they be expected to produce a reliable—if not definitive—treatment of the extermination of the Jews of Europe, The U.S. and the Holocaust would also bring the subject home, answering a question that lay at the heart of the matter: why should Americans, specifically, care about this genocide?

Aired on PBS in early September, the series’ episodes were duly admired by critics for their content, their staging, and their message. Of central significance, it was said, Burns, Novick, and Botstein had effectively dramatized America’s shameful failure to help save the European Jews from the fate awaiting them.

In this connection, Exhibit A was the futile attempt made by Anne Frank’s family in Amsterdam, who could easily have been accommodated in the United States, to secure a visa. One was introduced to the various internal American forces, some actively pro-Nazi but many simply opposed to foreign intervention, that had delayed an active American response to Hitler’s mission, as well as to the domestic conditions, political and economic, that worked against admitting Jewish refugees to the country. Altogether, this showcasing of Anne’s iconic status as the most famous chronicler and moving exemplar of the millions of Jews hunted, betrayed, and systematically killed made it seem that America itself, by refusing a visa, had been party to her and their fate.

The Public Broadcasting Service’s regular appeal for support to “Viewers Like You” speaks not just to those who contribute financially but to a much larger audience that is assumed to share its views and values. Burns, Novick, and Botstein, who are not historians or political thinkers but filmmakers who satisfy that audience, have mirrored their eagerness to do good and to atone for past iniquities.

Alejandro Mayorkas has no shame  Roger Kimball

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/alejandro-mayorkas-shame-biden-whips-border/

Who is the worst cabinet secretary in Joe Biden’s administration?

I know that the competition is stiff. Ponder, if your stomach can take it, secretary of state Antony Blinken, the stuffed shirt to end all stuffed shirts. Or secretary of defense Lloyd “Stand Down” Austin, the man who, with General Mark “White Rage” Milley, has transformed the US military into a racially obsessed reform school for budding transsexuals. Halloween is coming — and the Biden administration could field the entire team.

But for this quarter’s top prize must surely go to Alejandro Mayorkas, the man in charge of the Orwellian-named Department of Homeland Security.

A superb example of closing the barn doors after the horses had bolted, this superfluous and meddlesome agency was created after Osama bin Laden’s boys took out the World Trade Towers and incinerated part of the Pentagon. Too late! But that’s what bloated bureaucracies do. Something bad happens because you were’t paying attention, so spend a gazillion dollars to create more layers of bureaucracy that don’t do anything constructive but do inconvenience people every time they travel by plane and so remind them that the government is Doing Something to Stop Terrorism. Do you think that fielding a battalion of TSA agents to palpate Aunt Susan and irradiate every traveler in case he is carrying a bottle of water or wearing a belt with a metal buckle cuts down on hijackings or other acts of terror? Of course not. But it does suck up a lot of money, which after all is one of the main ends of government, and it also creates another layer of state coercion, which often seems to be the other main end.

The War for Internet Freedom Has Just Begun By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/10/the_war_for_internet_freedom_has_just_begun.html

I have heard it said many times over the years that President Bill Clinton and his inner circle were apprehensive about the rise of the internet right from its infancy.  While university clubs and lonely tech pioneers were generating public excitement by connecting people all over the planet, Clinton and his crew feared the internet for what it signified: an end to the government’s monopoly over information.

If just any old citizen could broadcast news to the world over cyberspace, none of the government’s traditional methods for regulating knowledge would continue to work.  Having a White House press corps, after all, has always had little to do with keeping government power in check and an awful lot to do with keeping potentially damaging information in house, supervised, and under control.  What better way to monitor and shape the news of tomorrow than to stuff all the White House correspondents into one small space for direct and easy manipulation?  Should CBS or NBC or The New York Times stumble upon a story too embarrassing for those in power, there is always some bargain to be made or some threat to be leveled that can keep that information bottled up.

The “free press,” in other words, has always been filled with information “gatekeepers” no less corruptible than any other humans and just as capable of intentionally keeping the public in the dark as they are of letting in some occasional light.  For what it’s worth, Clinton’s worries were warranted, and a complete unknown named Matt Drudge nearly took down his presidency with a story about a stained blue dress that several prestige news outlets had refused to cover.  The somewhat secret war over information would never be the same.

While we watch government-induced censorship increasingly squeeze the free flow of information today, it is easy to throw up our hands in despair and presume that the light of freedom will inexorably dim.  I encourage you instead to see government-engineered threats to free speech as further evidence that both totalitarianism and freedom are on the march.  Powerful institutions do not work this hard to silence voices unless they are deeply afraid.  The push for control is inextricably linked to the perception of fear.  The harder that authorities push to control what we say, the more clearly they reveal their own fear.  This is a sign of weakness.

Saudi Arabia Releases Statement Confirming That Biden Pressured Kingdom to Delay Cuts in Oil Production Until After Election By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/12/saudi-arabia-releases-statement-confirming-that-biden-pressured-kingdom-to-delay-cuts-in-oil-production-until-after-election/

The Biden regime cynically pressured Saudi Arabia to delay cuts in oil production for another month until after the midterm election, the Kingdom’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed in a statement Wednesday night.

The OPEC+ alliance announced a 2 million barrels a day cut in oil production a week ago, which could drive oil and gas prices up and the Democrats’ electoral fortunes down in the crucial days before the election.

“The Government of the Kingdom clarified through its continuous consultation with the US Administration that all economic analyses indicate that postponing the OPEC+ decision for a month, according to what has been suggested, would have had negative economic consequences,” the statement said. The ministry went on to note that the Saudi government prefers to negotiate in a “non-politicized” environment.

“The Kingdom stresses that while it strives to preserve the strength of its relations with all friendly countries, it affirms its rejection of any dictates, actions, or efforts to distort its noble objectives to protect the global economy from oil market volatility. Resolving economic challenges requires the establishment of a non-politicized constructive dialogue, and to wisely and rationally consider what serves the interests of all countries.”

Joe Biden Plays the Old Ugly American Having shut down America’s oil-producing abilities, Biden believes that he can strongarm his enemies to send us more of such taboo energy that we won’t produce ourselves.  By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/12/joe-biden-plays-the-old-ugly-american/

The Left used to accuse imperialist, resource-hungry Yanquis in Washington of cutting selfish deals with illiberal dictatorships in Latin America to grab their natural resources. 

How odd then that Joe Biden is now begging the despicable Maduro regime in Venezuela—corrupt, murderous, and anti-American—to produce more of its oil solely to send northward to America. 

Biden is quite willing to ease sanctions and condone the human rights abuses of Maduro—if his dictatorship will just open its oil spigots before the November midterm elections. 

Biden in 2020 campaigned on the supposed evil nature of the Saudi Arabian monarchy. Yet after vainly entreating Venezuela, Iran, and Russia, it was inevitable that Biden would once again supplicate the Saudis to pump more oil. 

Biden even pleaded with OPEC to increase its output and thus lower the world price of energy—again before the midterm elections. 

Biden, remember, has a bad habit of bragging that he lowered gas prices at the pump when the natural volatility of the petroleum markets leads to a fractional decrease. But once prices spike, he is utterly silent about his own role in limiting U.S. oil and gas output.

So, was it any surprise that the Saudis became the fourth non-democratic regime to refuse Biden’s entreaties? During the 2020 campaign, when gas prices were dirt cheap, and when then candidate Biden was demagoguing about ending fossil fuel, he opportunistically libeled the Saudis a “pariah” state. 

Will the Supreme Court Finally Get It Right on Affirmative Action? Will it finally respect the Constitution – and eliminate policies that hurt the very people they’re supposed to help? by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/will-the-supreme-court-finally-get-it-right-on-affirmative-action/

Hard on its landmark victories for judicial and Constitutional integrity last term, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this month on two cases challenging admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. If decided rightly, both cases should lead to the banning of unconstitutional, discriminatory racial preferences in university admissions.

After years of previous cases in which the Supreme Court tried various work-arounds to avoid stopping discrimination, maybe this year the Justices will get it right.

From its beginning in the 1978 decision Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke, the jurisprudence of subsequent cases have, as Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent in the 2003 Grutter vs. Bollinger case put it, “refus[ed] to define rigorously the broad state interest” served by “diversity,” and thus demonstrate specifically the “educational benefits that flow from student body diversity,” as Justice Anthony Kennedy in Fisher v. University of Texas (2016) vaguely defined that “compelling state interest” allegedly justifying discrimination on the basis of race.

As we’ve seen for 44 years, this vacuum created by the lack of clarity about what “diversity” is exactly, and how it specifically enhances educational outcomes, has been filled by illiberal ideology and factional politics that serves partisan purposes rather than educational ones. The “diversity,” then, that courts, businesses, educational institutions, and government trade in is so broad and simplistic that it guarantees the concept will be used to pick political and racial winners and losers.

Let’s start with the idea of “diversity” that supposedly justifies violating the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment. Actual diversity is light-years more complex than the old “scientific” racist categories of “black,” “white,” “Asian,” and later “Hispanic,” based on skin color, hair texture, or other superficial characteristics. Relying on these physical criteria ignores the real diversity that appears at the level of ethnicity: socio-economic class, language, dialects, customs, mores, folkways, regional differences, faith, and political preferences. Indeed, so bizarre has this crude “diversity” become that a poor white kid from a region historically impoverished who supposedly enjoys “white privilege” doesn’t add as much “diversity” to the student body as an affluent black student does.

Race-based preferences, then, ignore all those more interesting and meaningful markers of diverse identities––except the last one, politics. Particularly in education, “protected” categories like “race” and “gender” take precedence, and traffic in a “diversity” that camouflages a rigid intellectual and ideological orthodoxy. We used to called it “multiculturalism,” but now it sports the Orwellian moniker “woke.” The grand narrative of the “woke” is the melodrama of permanent white racial oppression of selected victims “of color.” “Diversity” now has been joined to “equity” and “inclusion” in order to define an ideology that is homogeneous, unequal, and excluding––the opposite of real diversity.

The Left Takes Their Evil To Med School If you want to survive a medical issue, don’t go to a doctor under the age of 40. by Derek Hunter

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-left-takes-their-evil-to-med-school/

It’s funny watching leftists beat themselves up over things they didn’t do that were done to people who are long dead. Honestly, it takes a special kind of stupid to embrace generational guilt based on skin color, gender, or whatever other ways Democrats create to divide people. You laugh, you have to laugh, because the very concept is so stupid. But so are the people engaging in it. They’re beyond stupid, actually, which is a problem because on the other side of stupid lies the ability to convince people to do things that are, for lack of a stronger word, evil.

Adolf Hitler used people’s ignorance to turn them against Jews, Gypsies, and anyone else he used as a scapegoat to cover his seizing of power. Once those heads were filled with Nazi lies it was pretty easy to get away with anything, with either the passive or active support of the public. The demonized hadn’t done anything, they were simply accused of things allegedly committed in history by people like them. Sound familiar?

Today, the ideological ancestors of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party are doing the same thing (progressives only have one playbook). Progressive Democrats – the party of slavery, the creators of Jim Crow and segregation, embracers of eugenics – have changed their tactics, but not their objectives. They want power, and they’ll do anything they must to get it. It’s important to remember Democrats divide to conquer.

So you end up with race segregated graduation ceremonies, school dances, clubs and dormitories. So-called “diversity officers,” possibly the most societally destructive job ever imagined, giving the stamp of approval to this sanctioned hate and school administrations and corporate leadership terrified to call BS on it.

Is there no one on the boards of these schools or companies brave enough to call racism out and demand it be ended? There doesn’t appear to be, at least not yet.

Until someone in those positions grows a pair, and/or a spine, the division and the destruction that comes with it will continue to grow like a tumor, and it will spread.

White Lives Matter, Obviously Why the Left hates Kanye’s message. by John Nantz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/white-lives-matter-obviously/

The Black Lives Matter movement is a sham, based wholly on lies surrounding the tragic death of George Floyd. Like so many other deaths, Floyd’s was trivialized and profaned by Marxist radicals masquerading as “social justice warriors.” People of his own ethnic extraction commoditized his flesh and blood, exhumed his bones, and wielded them as weapons in a dirty little political war.

Democrat party leadership, breathless with excitement, knelt in solidarity with the forces of anarchy and destabilization — the fellow travelers, foot soldiers, and shock troops of global Marxist power. Social justice is a trojan horse for the asymmetric espionage cadres of today’s Axis of Evil — Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. BLM is just another tool in the totalitarian arsenal, aimed at corroding liberty by corrupting the social, moral, and cultural ties that bind us.

Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and Candace Owens know all this and have trolled BLM hucksters, Democrat party lickspittles, and their propagandists in the legacy media by dropping a fashion hand grenade. During the Yeezy show at Paris Fashion week, Candace and Ye strolled into the spotlight sporting shirts printed with the revolutionary slogan — White Lives Matter.

The reaction from the establishment were hysterics and rage rivaling the intensity of the Spanish Inquisition. No wonder, since the same animating evil runs through the veins of every tyrant including those wearing tailored suits who even now haunt the halls of the White House and Capitol Hill.

Fauci’s Final Offensive As he heads for the door, Biden’s white coat supremacist tries to solidify the coverup. by Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/faucis-final-offensive/

Dr. Anthony Fauci, longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is defending a new grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, headed by Peter Daszak. The names may ring a bell with embattled Americans.

The EcoHealth Alliance has received tens of millions in research dollars from the federal government and partnered with China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) since 2004. Back in 2019, Dr. Fauci funded the Alliance to collaborate with the WIV on gain-of-function research, which makes viruses more lethal and transmissible. Dr. Fauci was “untruthful” about funding such research at the WIV, controlled by China’s Communist Party and unaccountable to American taxpayers.

As The Epoch Times reports, the new grant comes only weeks after the National Institutes of Health, the parent bureaucracy of NIAID, terminated a grant to the EcoHealth Alliance. It seems the WIV twice declined NIH requests “to hand over laboratory records so that it could review the research.” As The Intercept reports, Fauci’s support for the new grant has drawn pushback from medical scientists.

“It is disturbing that additional funding continues to be awarded for the same high-risk research that may have caused the current pandemic, before there has been a national investigation of the origin of the current pandemic,” molecular biologist Richard Ebright explained. The Rutgers scientist was also disturbed that “additional funding continues to be awarded to a contractor that the NIH has reported to have repeatedly and seriously violated contractual terms and conditions of a grant.”

The new grant is for “Analyzing the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.” Fauci’s support should come as no surprise.

Biden To Gig Workers: Drop Dead

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/10/13/the-livelihood-thieves-of-washington-d-c/

Crime will be fresh on the minds of voters during November’s midterm elections. But there is no greater robbery than that being planned by the Biden administration. What it’s proposing is a government-backed mugging.

In essence, the White House wants to outlaw gig work in America. No, it’s not saying so outright. The Biden Labor Department obscures that harsh reality with words meant to deceive. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh says the department’s proposal is needed to safeguard “​​our nation’s most vulnerable workers,” and ensure they are not deprived “of their federal labor protections.”

Left out is the part that, should the proposal become policy, millions of Americans will be stripped of their jobs and income. Under its rule, the Labor Department would be free to “determine whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act.” And it will determine in every case that the worker in question must be a hired employee, no longer free to continue his or her job as an independent contractor.

How can we be so sure as to say “every case”? There’s precedent. Almost three years ago Assembly Bill 5, passed and signed in 2019, went into effect in California. The standard it put in place to determine if workers could remain independent contractors is so high that it is virtually impossible to reach. Everyone has to be a hired employee or their job is lost.

But couldn’t businesses simply hire gig workers? Sure, some could. But many companies, especially growing companies, rely on independent contracting because the steep costs of employment that are mandated by government make hiring unaffordable.