RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2014/01/thomas-edison-has-been-repealed_2.html

It is a measure of the corroding progress of “Progressivism” that the federal government has mandated that we turn off our minds. That is, it has ordered light bulb manufacturers to cease making residential incandescent light bulbs (the wattage is irrelevant) that we have used for over a century, and purchase the new LED bulbs or the pigtail, mercury-filled bulbs.

The cartoon light bulb has served for decades as a symbol of an individual having an idea, of an individual thinking. This is the latest episode of the government vandalizing our minds.

Has the government really ordered us not to think, not to have ideas? Yes. We are no longer allowed to exercise our personal choices concerning light bulbs. Or health care insurance. Or gun ownership. Or the schools Americans send their children to, and what they learn in them. Or smoking. Or the foods we eat, or the beverages we drink. Or the gasoline we can afford or prefer to put in our tanks. And et cetera. The list of government violations of our rights, of the usurpations of our freedoms, of the steady invasions of our lives by fiat law, is long and wearisome to read. If compiled – and I’m sure someone or some organization has undertaken the task – it would be thousands of pages high – higher than the Affordable Care Act – and a big chunk of them, at the bottom of the stack, would be yellow with age.

We are no longer permitted to think that we have choices. The government has made or will make the choices for us. The lights that will turn on in our minds will be government lights. Doubtless, penalties will soon be imposed on anyone using an incandescent bulb in his home or office.

It’s all in the name of “public service,” or the environment, or the planet, or energy conservation, or “efficiency standards.” This is the nature of statism. In particular, of fascism.

THANKS J.S.

http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/ancient-textile-may-contain-biblical-blue-dye-lost-1300-years-001188#.UsSS7FuFKcY.facebook

An extremely rare blue dye which adorned the robes of kings, priests, and Jews in ancient times, and which was lost to the world nearly 1,300 years ago, is believed to have been found on a 2,000-year-old piece of fabric found near the Dead Sea.

In accordance with a Torah commandment, the ancient biblical blue dye, known as tekhelet, was used to colour the tassels of the four-cornered garment worn by men, as well as the clothing worn by the High Priest during the days of the temple. The Bible in the book of Numbers relates God’s charge to Moses:

Speak to the children of Israel, and bid them make fringes in the corners of their garments throughout their generations, putting upon the fringe of each corner a thread of blue. And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them

http://politicalmavens.com/

New Yorkers who watched the inauguration ceremonies of Bill de Blasio saw something quite extraordinary take place – the conversion of the Big Apple to the Apple that is Rotten to its core. Not one speaker came to praise our city – all were there to bury it and focus only on its racism and indifference to social justice. Starting with Harry Belafonte, a singer from Trinidad whose career was internationally launched from this country but who espouses anti-Americanism at every opportunity, we heard a litany of our many sins, notably our treatment of the black man. Instead of using his time at the podium to inspire his black brothers to stay in school, stay off drugs and marry before reproducing – he seized on New York’s stop and frisk law which has already been modified and needs no further comment. Instead of chastising his black brothers to stop murdering (mostly their own brethren), he bemoaned the fact that our country has the largest population of black prisoners in the world. On to the Reverend Fred Lucas Jr. (chaplain for the Dept of Sanitation), dressed in an elegant coat, scarf and hat, who referred to New York as a plantation but failed to say which massah gave him the fancy threads.

Letitia James, our new public advocate, chose to hold hands with 11 year old, gum-chewing Dasani Coates, the subject of a five-part series in the Times about the failure of NYC to adequately provide for our homeless. For political purposes, Dasani came to be a heroine instead of the victim of drug-addicted parents who sired 8 children, lost their jobs, have each served jail time and spend their disability benefits on such important priorities as redeeming the father’s previously hocked gold teeth. Ms. James’ speech was another rant about what we have failed to do for our least fortunate and her pledge to see that this changes. (Memo to smart journalist: check back on the Coates family at the end of de Blasio’s first term) It was an arrow aimed at the departing mayor who spurred development of real estate projects and stadiums but it said nothing about the generosity of the man who contributed 658 million dollars of his own money to various charities within our city. Somebody paid for young Dasani’s intricately braided hairstyle and the winter outfits worn by her whole family, not to mention the new apartment that was provided for them by the end of the Times series. Not one word of acknowledgment from Ms. James for any of these “entitlements.”

THIS IS A VOLLEY OF VITRIOL OCCASIONED BY ANDY McCARTHY’S FAIRLY POSITIVE REVIEW OF “AMERICAN BETRAYAL”… THERE WAS A REPRISE OF THE FALSE, VICIOUS IGNORANT, INSULTING AND OUTRAGEOUS LIES BY RON AND CON (RADOSH AND BLACK) AGAINST DIANA WEST MASQUERADING AS A “SEMINAR?” AND HERE IS EVIDENCE OF A MUGGING OF AN AUTHOR AND THE MUGEE IS NOT EVEN INVITED…VERBAL “BLACKOUT” GANG TECHNIQUES….RSK

http://tundratabloids.com/2014/01/mugged-by-neo-conservatives-the-new-criterions-seminar-continues-fpms-assault.html
Mugged by Neoconservatives
The controversy over Diana West’s book American Betrayal continues into the new year.

The New Criterion is hosting a seminar on Ms. West and her book in the just-released January 2014 issue. Contributions include a lead editorial plus five letters on the topic from Ron Radosh, Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, Conrad Black, M. Stanton Evans, and Andrew C. McCarthy.

That’s an awful lot of firepower to roll out, and a lot of ink to expend, just to ensure the “take-down” of American Betrayal. It’s further evidence of the intense gravitational influence exerted by Planet X on American conservatives, and especially on the hagiographers of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Everyone should visit The New Criterion and read this new symposium. Below is the contribution sent in by the noted historian of Communism M. Stanton Evans. I’m reproducing it here because it largely agrees with what has been said on the topic in this space over the past five months (see the archives for a full list of posts):

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/American-Betrayal–an-exchange–M–Stanton-Evans-7805

To the Editors:

Somebody once asked me for a definition of “paleoconservative,” a term occasionally used in right-wing political circles. I said I didn’t know what it meant exactly, but I offered a definition based on what I had witnessed: “A paleoconservative is a conservative who’s been mugged by a neoconservative.”

That exchange has come to mind as I’ve watched the concerted and apparently endless attack on Diana West and her Cold War book, American Betrayal. Ms. West isn’t a self-identified “paleoconservative” in any sense that I’m aware of, and doesn’t qualify for the title anyway, because it mostly pertains to an older generation. She is, however, certainly a conservative, and has certainly been mugged, intellectually speaking, by people who are “neoconservatives,” according to their own description.

http://gatesofvienna.net/2014/01/hostility-to-truth-telling/

What follows is a New Year’s present to Diana West and a tardy acknowledgement of the work of two more writers who rose to her defense. (Our donors are well-acquainted with my particular brand of ‘tardy’ — its forms are usually just as long as this one will prove to be.)

Here are two reviews of Diana West’s book American Betrayal by people who actually read it with care and give the book its proper historical context.

[‘American Betrayal’ by Diana West] These reviews would have been re-posted here sooner, but when I heard The Bully Boys would be gathering once again in another futile attempt to quash and/or disqualify American Betrayal, it seemed wiser to hold these two arrows and release them at the right moment. Thus I waited until after their pile-on went public to present these authentic responses.

I’m told the essays are a “seminar” or a “symposium”. Do esteemed historians hold symposia in which the author who will be the center of their attention is not invited or notified? Seriously? This tale wanders on, and the levels of bizarre accumulate. Anyone got a Geiger counter handy?

This beat down is far past customary and usual. We have entered some strange country by now. Surely Ms. West must feel like a shank of bone being chewed to death by the neighborhood’s pesky dogs. Sniffing and growling, they are worrying the subject of Diana West’s book to death. Obviously they’ve failed to grasp that each new gnaw and growl simply shows them up more certainly as beyond reason…or Reason. After this regression, they will need to be house-trained all over again.

To change metaphors a bit, think of prepubescent boys who fall all over themselves to pull the pretty girl’s pigtails while denying the truth — i.e., they’re bewitched by her charms. Each new protestation and hair-pull underlines this fatal attraction. It’s obvious to everyone but themselves.

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2013/12/31/an-ecofeminist-does-milk/

The American Studies Association has been much in the news lately for backing an “academic boycott [1]” of Israel. That disgusting display of politically correct, anti-Semitic grandstanding has garnered the ASA some small portion of the obloquy it deserves. As my PJM colleague Ronald Radosh pointed out [2] here, the ASA picked on “the Middle East’s only existing democracy to protest.” The ASA’s obtuse and juvenile leftism has even embarrassed other elements of the academy: MIT recently joined [3] Yale, Harvard, Brown, Brandeis, and other elite institutions [4] in condemning the boycott, which, as MIT President L. Rafael Reif noted, “fundamentally violates the principles of academic freedom that are central to the excellence of MIT and American higher education.”

You may not know much about the American Studies Association. The small (5000-member) organization is known to many outside the academy as the “Anti-American Studies Association” because of its reliably backwater, reflexive leftism. In that, it hardly differs from many, perhaps most, other academic organizations in the humanities (or perhaps I should say the “humanities,” since such organizations are antithetic to the spirit of humanism in any normal sense). The Modern Language Association, to take one obvious example, has long been a virulent redoubt of politically correct, leftwing attitudinizing [5].

I have to admit that is has beem quite a while since I have given such rancid, misbegotten products of wayward affluence much thought. Having labored in that repellent vineyard long enough to write Tenured Radicals [6] and The Rape of the Masters [7], I have “supped full with horrors” and figure I have done my bit for the cause of academic forensic pathology.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/ibn-warraq-takes-on-fact-fiction-and-freedom/print/ The world’s free peoples “risk losing all to Islamist thuggery,” the pseudonymous Islam scholar Ibn Warraq warns in his latest book, Sir Walter Scott’s Crusades and Other Fantasies, a collection of essays previously published online.  Analyzing past Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations, the Muslim apostate Warraq insightfully separates historical fact from popular fiction before defending the freedom […]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/2014-year-of-decision/print/ This year we will see if America is still a center-right country, or if Obama’s two terms will mark a historic shift to the left. History and recent events give cause for optimism, subject, of course, to unforeseen events. The champions of big government, wealth redistribution through taxation and entitlement transfers, and a coercive, […]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/danish-muslim-apostate-faces-hate-speech-charges/print/ “Muslims love to take advantage of” free speech, Danish-Palestinian poet Yahya Hassan says, “and as soon as there is someone else saying something critical against them, they want to restrict it.”  In an action previously indicated by this writer, Hassan is now personally facing this double standard in Danish “hate speech” charges for his anti-Islam […]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-muslim-suicide-convert/print/ Both of the suicide bombers who struck in Russia were Muslim converts. They follow a long string of Muslim terrorist converts, including the murderers of British soldier Lee Rigby, who were sentenced last month, and Terry Lee Loewen, who plotted to car bomb the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport that same month. Muslim converts engage in […]