RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/society/2021/09/when-science-becomes-a-truncheon/

I should like to make a personal confession that will probably disappoint some readers, and perhaps please others. I have now had both doses of AstraZenica. I’m not an ‘anti-vaxxer’, nor a conspiracy theorist. But I also have good, intelligent, well-informed and rational friends who strongly oppose the vaccine and I do not like to see them punished by the infliction of civil disabilities or verbal abuse.

Some Christians and other religious people have grave reservations about vaccines as this letter to the PM from the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox archbishops of Sydney clearly shows. Such qualms about abortion and the use foetal tissue in the vaccines’ development are perhaps not shared by most people, but they ought to be treated with respect in a civil society.

Whether to make use of research derived during WWII from experimentation on prisoners under conditions of terrible cruelty was once a grave moral question. To wish to avoid the use of vaccines that have been developed, even remotely, from aborted human ‘materials’ is a legitimate and understandable moral stance. Yet as one of our readers points out, it is virtually impossible to isolate oneself in this complex world from evil: if you pay taxes you support Medicare, and Medicare funds abortions.

I agree that COVID-19 has caused great suffering and many deaths.  That is beyond dispute. But for more than a year and a half we have been bombarded by many health ‘orders’ that claim a scientific basis yet are clearly motivated less by science than by ease of law-enforcement. In particular, some absurd strictures about the use of masks in public and private places have been given the force of law. I am not a scientist, but I know enough to affirm that science is never ‘settled’ and that those who claim it is are usually not scientists.  It is extremely hard for a non-scientist to extract reliable scientific information from the internet, but we must do our best to separate good science from false claims that pretend to a scientific basis but merely make it easier for governments to police the behaviour of their citizens.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/09/23/tulsi_gabbard_the_deep_state_elite_media_destroy_outsiders_anyone_deemed_a_threat_to_their_power.html

Former presidential candidate and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) joined ‘Special Report’ host Bret Baier on Thursday to discuss the White House’s approach to domestic and foreign policies.

“Outsiders: people like me, people like Donald Trump, it doesn’t matter, Democrat or Republican, if they identify … someone who is not going to toe the line [or] is not someone who is not going to follow kind of the establishment way of things that are accepted, they pose a threat.”

“That confirms what I have known to be true, which is that you have the power elite, people like Hillary Clinton, those around her working with the media, the deep state in order to bring down the destruction and downfall of anyone that they deem to be a threat to their power,” Gabbard said.

“They will do all they can to silence or censor or cancel what they view to be a threat. So this is bigger than about me or Trump or anyone else,” she added.

Gabbard said this habit in the “Deep State” is “a threat to our country and democracy.”

“The arrogance that these people have in thinking they have the right to manipulate the American people what they view, what they hear, what they see all to preserve their own selfish interests, not caring at all about the impact on the country, the impact of the American people or who gets hurt along the way,” Gabbard said.

Gabbard on the border: “Utter disaster… directly attributed to the Biden-Harris administration’s open-border policy. This is not only a humanitarian crisis. It is a national security crisis and it’s something I have said all along, which is that if we do not secure our borders, then we can’t have a secure nation. There are so many issues that have happened under this administration that have led to this point and their continued failure of leadership is exacerbating the crisis that we are seeing play out before our very eyes.”

https://www.dailywire.com/news/aoc-slammed-for-crying-after-iron-dome-funded-shedding-tears-that-less-israelis-are-going-to-die?itm_source=parsely-api&utm_source=cnemail&utm_medium=email

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) faced intense backlash online Thursday afternoon after the distraught far-left congresswoman appeared to cry after the House passed a bill to fund Israel’s Iron Dome, which Ocasio-Cortez did not support.

Israel’s Iron Dome saw extensive use earlier this year after Palestinian terrorists fired 4,500+ rockets at innocent Israeli citizens. The Iron Dome intercepted approximately 90% of the rockets fired out of Gaza, saving countless lives.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/23/the-moral-perverseness-of-democrats-foreign-policy-priorities/

Few areas of public policy lend themselves less easily to big-picture doctrinal sorting and various “-ism” labeling than does foreign policy. That is perhaps now truer than ever, as America’s two major political parties continue their already ascendant realignment, with Democrats abandoning their working-class roots in favor of a professional-managerial ruling class and Republicans ditching the libertarian-inspired corporatism of yesteryear in favor of a “deplorable”-inspired populism. Foreign policy is an inherently nuanced subject, and speaking in broad strokes about it during a once-in-a-generation political realignment can risk analytical error.

Those caveats aside, we should still feel comfortable making what may, at least superficially, seem like precisely such an overly broad statement: The Democratic Party’s mainstream foreign policy priorities, in 2021, are completely morally perverse. That moral inversion simply cannot be overstated; the events of this week help underscore why.

On Tuesday, during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, when religious Jews were offline, House Democratic leadership caved to the outspoken, anti-America, anti-Israel U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-led “squad” and stripped about $1 billion for funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system that was included in a must-pass continuing resolution. House Democratic leadership did so due to the staunch opposition of funding Iron Dome by the likes of Ocasio-Cortez, Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)

Democratic leadership initially claimed the Iron Dome funding will reappear in a later defense budget bill a few months from now but, perhaps realizing the subpar optics of refusing to fund Iron Dome to the tune of $1 billion in a massive CR that included $28.6 billion in disaster aid, introduced late on Wednesday a standalone bill to fully fund Iron Dome. But the fact that House leadership was forced to resort to such a gambit is itself telling. Steny Hoyer may be the House Democrats’ majority leader, but the House Democrats’ real leader is now crystal-clear: Ocasio-Cortez. The Hamas Caucus has struck again.