RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/proportionality-again/

You could set your watch by it. Whenever there is an atrocious attack on the United States or Israel, if transnational progressives are not subjecting us to the “escalation” drivel, they are subjecting us to the “proportionality” drivel.

For about the millionth time, the law-of-war concept of proportionality does not hold that a response to an attack has to be on the same scale as the attack itself. Several Biden supporters are making that case regarding Iran’s killing and wounding of our troops in Jordan (otherwise, you see, there could be . . . escalation). Think how absurd that is: A rabid enemy aggressor gets both to attack you first and to dictate the scope of your response.

That, of course, is not how proportionality works.

The driving question in a proportionality calculation is: What is the military objective? If that objective is legitimate (which, under the United States Constitution, we get to decide for ourselves), then the use of force must be reasonably proportionate to what is required to achieve the objective. If the objective is to end or drastically diminish the aggression of Iran and its proxy forces, then a proportionate use of force would be whatever is necessary to break the enemy’s will to continue (and even escalate) that aggression.

In April 1988, after Iran mined the Persian Gulf to paralyze commerce and security traffic, one of these mines detonated and nearly sank the USS Samuel B. Roberts, a guided-missile frigate, as it was escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers. President Reagan responded with what became known as Operation Praying Mantis, combined surface-ship and air attacks that destroyed much of Iran’s navy. As described by retired U.S. Navy captain William Luti in a Christmas Day Wall Street Journal op-ed, the operation remains a case study in effective deterrence.

That operation was textbook proportionality.

This weekend, Bari Weiss hosted a debate between me and Johns Hopkins professor Yascha Mounk on “the right way to fight illiberalism.” There were points of agreement, but ultimately, the debate diverged as we considered the practical necessities for winding down repressive DEI bureaucracies. My approach was more aggressive; Mounk’s was more cerebral. The consensus in Bari Weiss’ comments section was that I had the upper hand, but you can listen and make your own determination.

The following are highlights selected by The Free Press:

On how to describe DEI’s capture of higher education:

Bari Weiss: Some people call it wokeness, which sort of automatically brands you as being on the right. Other people call it critical theory or identity politics or postmodern neo-Marxism. There’s a lot of disagreement about how we actually describe this thing that all of us are witnessing. So I want to start there. What is it that we’re actually talking about?

Christopher Rufo: I think it’s an ideological syndrome. So it’s a cluster of traits, ideas, concepts, narratives, and bureaucratic arrangements that have really revolutionized American society over the past 50 years. I trace the immediate origins back to the year 1968, and the argument that I make in my book, America’s Cultural Revolution, is that all of the ideas from the radical left of that era—the late 1960s, early 1970s—have infiltrated universities and then started to move laterally through bureaucracies in the state sector, in K–12 education, in HR departments, and even the Fortune 100 companies. And what you see over the course of this process is some very multisyllabic, complex ideological concepts from the originators of these ideas in that period. And now they’ve filtered out through bureaucratic language, through euphemisms, to become what we now know as DEI. That’s the ultimate bureaucratic expression of these ideologies.

You can call it—any of those labels that you just suggested, I think, are correct in general, at least facets of this ideology. But at this point, it’s not just an idea. It’s actually an administrative, cultural, and bureaucratic power that has manifested itself and entrenched itself as a new, let’s say, hegemonic cultural force in American life. 

Yascha Mounk: I think the best way to boil down the ideas of this ideology is in three propositions. Number one, that identity categories like race, gender, and sexual orientation are the key prism for understanding society. But to understand how we talk to each other today, or to understand who won the last election, or to understand how political revolutions happen, you have to look at things like race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Number two, that universalist values and neutral rules, like those enshrined in the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, are just meant to pull the wool over people’s eyes, that they actually were always designed to perpetuate forms of racist and sexist discrimination, that as Derrick Bell, the founder of critical race theory, claimed, America in the year 2000 remained as racist as it had been in 1950 and 1850. 

http://www.swstotd.blogspot.com

Free choice, where it does not break the law or infringe on the rights of others, is fundamental to our rights as Americans. We make hundreds of choices every day, some significant, others not so. Next November’s election represents a significant choice. It has been portrayed as critical because, or so we are told, democracy is on the line. Progressives, and their propagandists in mainstream media, would have us believe that the election of Donald Trump would signify the end of democracy. And there is no question he is mean-spirited, has spoken of retribution against those who oppose him, and may go to jail. On the other hand, many of us on the right believe democracy is at risk because current political trends suggest we are, with the degradation of individualism, headed toward group-think, socialism, and central planning. One is reminded of Yeats: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.”

As for Trump, despite his well-publicized flaws, consider what he faced in his first term: the weaponization of the intelligence services; retribution by his political enemies; along with the pursuit of identity politics, the elevation of the group over the individual, the imposition of DEI into many aspects of our lives, and the inflicting of ESG into our investment and financial organizations – the phony feel-good elements of Wokeism. Keep in mind, threats to democracy can come from the left as well as the right. So what does a thoughtful voter do? Colleen Hoover, a writer of romance stories for young teens, wrote in Hopeless: “Sometimes you have to choose between a bunch of wrong choices and no right ones.” Given what our options for President are likely to be in November, voters may face a similar ineluctable conundrum – a “Sophie’s Choice” between two bad options, the rock shoals of Scylla or the whirlpool of Charybdis. However, there are nine months to go until election day and much could happen, especially with two far-from-ideal elderly candidates.