RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://victorhanson.com/humpty-dumpty-america-or-how-did-we-suddenly-fall-apart-part-three-the-symptoms/

Foreign Policy

There have been plenty of foreign policy disasters over the last 60 years since the Vietnam Era. But even in our failures, there was no inherent intent to destroy ourselves and to deliberately harm efforts to improve our security and stature overseas.

Not now.

Why are we experiencing one of the worst military recruitment crises of the last half-century? Why did we drive out over 8,000 of our most experienced soldiers for not being vaxxed, the majority with acquired immunity from prior Covid-19 bouts?

Why was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs proud that he had called his Chinese counterpart to warn him of the supposed volatility of his own American Commander-in-Chief? Why did General Milley and Secretary of Defense Austin promise Congress to chase unicorns of “white rage” and “white privilege,” without any supporting documentation of systemic racial discrimination in the ranks? Were they unhappy that white males died at twice their population proportion in our recent optional wars abroad?

Did they think all their virtue-signaling would increase recruitment, end internal dissension, and improve morale in the ranks?

If someone wished to humiliate and destroy the prestige of the United States, erode our deterrence, and greenlight anti-American aggression, he could not have done any better than the architects of the 2021 Afghanistan flight.

How did the U.S. manage to become so arrogant and impotent all at once?

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/21/judge-orders-removal-of-historic-confederate-monument-in-arlington-cemetery/

On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled in favor of the Biden Administration’s efforts to remove an iconic Confederate monument from Arlington National Cemetery, despite efforts to preserve it.

As reported by ABC News, the removal of the monument was originally ordered by the Biden Administration’s “Naming Commission,” a partisan group dedicated to the renaming or removal of everything related to the Confederacy in the United States. Having previously ordered the renaming of many military bases, including the renowned Fort Bragg, the commission ordered the removal of the Confederate monument in Arlington Cemetery, which is surrounded by the graves of Confederate soldiers, as well as the grave of the monument’s sculptor, Moses Ezekiel.

After efforts by several heritage groups, including Defend Arlington and Save Southern Heritage, the attempted removal of the monument was blocked by U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston on Monday over concerns that the removal would desecrate the surrounding graves. He thus ordered that the government was temporarily prohibited “from taking any acts to deconstruct, tear down, remove, or alter the object of this case — the Confederate Reconciliation Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery and the surrounding gravesites — pending further action of this Court.”

However, Alston later determined that “Plaintiffs have not alleged facts that support the premise that Defendants intend to “destroy” rather than “remove” the Memorial.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fetterman-i-didnt-leave-the-left-it-left-me/

An interesting line with a lot of history to it from Sen. Jon Fetterman on dumping the “progressive” label he used to use.

“I don’t feel like I’ve left the label; it’s just more that it’s left me.”

President Reagan would often quip, “I didn’t leave the Democratic party, the Democratic Party left me.” Similar lines have been used by everyone from Bill Maher, “It’s not me who’s changed, it is the left” to Elon Musk.

It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on with Fetterman after his medical issues, but a dividing line seems to have been the Left’s support for Hamas, but he’s also embraced a species of economic populism, fighting against land sales to China, and Japan’s takeover of U.S. Steel.

While Fetterman had never been a foreign policy guy, he did explicitly break with the far left on Israel during his campaign.

“I would also respectfully say that I’m not really a progressive in that sense,” he added. “Our campaign is based on core Democratic values and principles, and always has been, and there is no daylight between myself and these kinds of unwavering commitments to Israel’s security.”

Still, Fetterman said he was “eager to affirm” his positions on the record, lest there be any uncertainty among supporters of Israel who have similar questions. “I want to go out of my way to make sure that it’s absolutely clear,” he told JI, “that the views that I hold in no way go along the lines of some of the more fringe or extreme wings of our party.”

The Left did not take that seriously and assumed he was just pandering. Now they’re finding out that he really meant it.

So this did not come out of nowhere. And it’s not just about Israel.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/12/christmas-in-a-time-of-war

George Weigel’s column “The Catholic Difference” is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver. George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington, D.C.’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.

EXCERPT:

Hamas’s barbarism, by contrast, is motivated by religious conviction—warped religious conviction, to be sure; false religious conviction, undoubtedly; but religious conviction, nonetheless. Yes, Hamas has a political program, and its slogan, “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea,” is as despicable a euphemism for exterminationist anti-Semitism as was the Nazis’ “Final Solution” to Die Judenfrage (the “Jewish Question”). But what turns people into deranged Hamas murderers and “martyrs,” who by all accounts enjoyed killing 1,400 innocents on 10/7, is the vile belief that what they were doing was the will of God.

It was not; it could not be. Only a fundamentally distorted understanding of “God” could lead to such a wicked conclusion. The God of the Bible cannot command the murder he forbade in the Ten Commandments, because the God of the Bible is a God of reason, and reason cannot contradict itself. The God of the Qur’an, however, is a God of will, who can command whatever he chooses and demand submission to that command as the ticket to salvation. Taken to extremes, that false idea of God as Absolute Willfulness is what makes Hamas, Hezbollah, and their exterminationist anti-Semitism possible, and what gives these hopeless political movements their staying power.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/12/22/dear-santa-why-is-christmas-so-expensive-this-year/

Jill Biden’s creepy video, featuring a troupe of tap dancers showing off the garish Christmas decorations in the White House, prompted one journalist to comment that they are “really going for the Hunger Games as this year’s Christmas theme.”

While they’re prancing around in the capital, out in the districts everyone else is struggling to pay the sky-high cost of this festive season.

Are you traveling to be with friends and family? Airfares are 18% higher than they were Christmas 2020. And if you try to cut costs by driving, gasoline prices are 45% higher.

Buying food for your guests will cost 20% more than the last Christmas before Bidenflation took hold.

PNC Bank’s annual “Christmas Price Index,” a gimmicky index that measures the cost to buy all the gifts mentioned in “Twelve Days of Christmas,” has gone up more than 13% in the past two years.  

Haven’t bought a Christmas tree yet? It will cost you about 10% more than last year, which is on top of the 10% increase the year before, and 10% the year before that.

Those Christmas lights decorating the house? Your electric bill will be 24% higher. If you’re sending Christmas cards, stationery costs are up 27% under Biden.

At least drowning your sorrows in alcohol is getting less expensive.

https://tomklingenstein.com/video/the-hour-is-getting-late/

America today exists in a state of war, a cold civil war. On one side is the Woke Regime. On the other side, our side, is the American Regime.

The Woke Regime defines justice as group outcome equality. For the American Regime, on the other hand, justice is a reward for individual merit. A regime based on merit will always give rise to group differences. These two regimes are utterly irreconcilable. You can’t admit people to college, flight training, law schools, or anything else according to merit and, at the same time, according to group quotas. It’s one or the other. There is no middle ground; hence, the two sides are implacable enemies. This is what makes it a war. 

The woke left understands this; too often, the American side, especially its political leadership, does not. You don’t win a war if you don’t know you’re in one. The woke side fights. They show us no mercy; we, on the other hand, ring our hands and take a beating. We try to reach across the aisle, but in a war, this is a sucker’s game.

The Woke Regime is comprised of a loose confederation of our most important institutions: media, academia, government, charitable foundations, and corporations, particularly big tech. 

The George Floyd riots show this confederation in action. Woke agitators sparked the flames that lit the riots; the regime’s intellectual leaders justified the riots; its corporate donors gave billions to Black Lives Matter’s network; its media looked the other way; its justice system freed criminals, and its security apparatus and political leaders fanned the flames. No, not all Democrats are Woke Leftists, but virtually all Democrats go along so they might as well be Woke Leftists.