RUTHFULLY YOURS

Thoughts on Things You Cannot Say Posted By Roger Kimball

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/04/10/thoughts-on-things-you-cannot-say/

I am not going to comment directly on l’affaire Derb, the case of my friend John Derbyshire, who was ostracized [1] from the pages of National Review for writing a column elsewhere [2] that expressed unacceptable opinions about race. I would, however, like to register my admiration for what Mark Steyn had to say about the incident, in particular what he has to say about the condition of free speech in the public square. “The Left,” Mark notes:

is pretty clear about its objectives on everything from climate change to immigration to gay marriage: Rather than win the debate, they’d just as soon shut it down. They’ve had great success in shrinking the bounds of public discourse, and rendering whole areas of public policy all but undiscussable. In such a climate, my default position is that I’d rather put up with whatever racist/sexist/homophobic/Islamophobic/whateverphobic excess everybody’s got the vapors about this week than accept ever tighter constraints on “acceptable” opinion.

Indeed. As I wrote to another friend, it used to be that if someone expressed an opinion you didn’t like, the proper response was to endeavor to refute it. What happened to that ambition? Mark, I fear, is correct: “The net result of Derb’s summary execution by NR will be further to shrivel the parameters, and confine debate in this area to ever more unreal fatuities.”

http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/19515-Diversity-Vs-Understanding.html Diversity Vs Understanding I grew up in my working class neighborhood with friends of different races, ethnic backgrounds, religions, and sexual orientations. Although there were stereotypes and jokes that, in retrospect, are embarrassing, we all talked openly and understood each other. That bred mutual respect and defense of each’s rights to fair treatment based […]

http://www.timesofisrael.com/mexican-town-celebrates-easter-with-burning-of-the-jews/

Mexican town celebrates Easter with ‘burning of the Jews’

A small Chiapas town ends its Holy Week observance by parading Jewish effigies through the streets, then setting them on fire The 2006 film ‘Borat’ depicted an absurd ‘Running of the Jew’ ceremony. In Mexico, a newspaper is reporting on a genuine ‘Burning of the Jews’ event.
The world is full of charming Easter traditions, but this isn’t one of them.

A newspaper in Mexico is detailing Sunday’s “burning of the Jews,” an annual tradition in Coita, a small town in the state of Chiapas. As part of the custom, locals spend the middle of their Holy Week making Jewish effigies — a reference to Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus before his crucifixion.

The fake Jews are then displayed for three days in different parts of the town, serving as an example of poor conduct.

They’re ultimately paraded through the streets on Easter Sunday, with local children assigned to stand in front of them and collect money for flammable materials.

One Day in the Life of a Conservative in Hollywood — on The Glazov Gang
by Frontpagemag.com
Tom Dreesen, Dwight Schultz and Sonja Schmidt share their personal experiences in the leftist Gulag.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/11/one-day-in-the-life-of-a-conservative-in-hollywood-on-the-glazov-gang/

Let a Hundred Breitbarts Bloom by Max P. Friedman

Republished because original was distorted in transmission.

The sudden and tragic death of conservative fireball Andrew Breitbart has started a national discussion among conservatives as to who he was and what he wanted to accomplish in the future, as well as what as what he had accomplished in his short political/journalistic life.

However, a few talk show hosts actually asked a very important question, i.e. “Who is going to succeed him?”

The opinion, of some, was that no one could replace him, that he occupied an unique place in time and American history, and that the patriots’ clean-up of the media movement has suffered an irreplaceable loss.

Not so! We have lost a lot of good conservatives in the past few years, including Tony Blankley, one of the best conservative commentators around. The other “Tony”, Tony Snow, as not only a good writer, but also a good presidential press secretary who knew how the mainstream media played their biased news games, and beat them at it.

Each gentleman, like Breitbart, was unique in their own way, with their own special talents, styles, and knowledge. The republic did not collapse with their loss, and it won’t now. Breitbart’s successors at Big Journalism and related sites, are doing a very good job carrying on his work, but we need to address the valid question of who will succeed him in general.

No one is going to replace an unique individual unless we have human cloning down to an art.

What will happen is going to be a combination f the rise of the Tea Party and Mao tse-tung’s “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom” campaign of the 1950’s.

With the rise of the Tea Party, new people stepped forward to lead small groups, with some of them going on to become national leaders of this movement. You probably had never heard of them before, and you couldn’t recall their names right now. Not important.

The Moderate U.S. Establishment Position? That the Muslim Brotherhood Might Be Moderate URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/04/09/the-moderate-u-s-establishment-muslim-brotherhood-moderate/ The Washington Post continues to talk relatively sensibly about Middle East developments. And yet its latest editorial also shows the type of contortions necessary to avoid facing the awful truth of the situation in the region. The editorial concludes: […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295600/largesse-losers-thomas-sowell

How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on and stop getting swept away by rhetoric?

Why should being in a professional sport exempt anyone from prosecution for advocating deliberate violence? Recent revelations of such advocacy of violence by an NFL coach should lead to his banishment for life by the NFL, and criminal prosecution by the authorities. If you are serious about reducing violence, you have to be serious about punishing those who advocate it.

Have you noticed that what modest economic improvements we have seen occurred during the much-lamented “gridlock” in Washington? Nor is this unusual. If you check back through history, doing nothing has a far better track record than politicians’ intervening in the economy.

With all the talk about people paying their “fair share” of income taxes, why do nearly half the people in this country pay no income taxes at all? Is that their “fair share”? Or is creating more recipients of government handouts, at no cost to themselves, simply a strategy to gain more votes?

John Derbyshire Learns What We Cannot Talk About Posted By Bruce Thornton

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/10/john-derbyshire-learns-what-we-cannot-talk-about/

Wittgenstein once wrote, “What we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.” Ex-National Review writer John Derbyshire has just learned the modern American version of this truth. What we Americans cannot talk about is race (except, of course, in the anodyne terms established by political correctness), and woe betide anyone who refuses to pass over this topic in silence.

Derbyshire got in trouble over a piece he posted on the webzine Taki’s Magazine called “The Talk: Nonblack Version. “The talk” is what many professional blacks call the coming-of-age conversation they have with their kids, the main theme of which seems to be the persistence of racism in American society. Derbyshire’s version focuses on some matters of fact, such as the disproportionate numbers of black criminals, and others of speculation, such as black intelligence inferiority. It was the latter, of course, that got Derbyshire fired by National Review, which called such ideas “nasty and indefensible.”

The Lies of Günter Grass Posted By David Solway

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/10/exposing-the-lies-of-gunter-grass/

It’s a curious fact that the reputation of many contemporary novelists of popular distinction rests on a single book. Think, for example, of Umberto Eco. Had he not written The Name of the Rose, he would be better known today as an essayist and semiotician who had also published some interesting if not particularly memorable fiction. (The one exception to the rule might be Foucault’s Pendulum.) This is even truer of Norwegian antisemite, Jostein Gaarder, whose Sophie’s World catapulted him to international acclaim. The works that followed might best be portrayed as competent-to-forgettable. Ditto the anti-Zionist Louis De Bernière whose Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was his one resonant success, and Portuguese antisemite and Nobel Laureate José Saramago, whose only readable book was The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis.

As for Germany’s most famous living novelist, Günter Grass pretty well consorts with the paradigm, The Tin Drum having established him as a major literary and political voice of the twentieth century. Admittedly, subsequent books like Dog Years and The Flounder were notable achievements. But absent the beating of The Tin Drum, the callithumpian parade of Grass’ works in the public arena would have been far less spectacular. He cannot be dismissed as a one-shot Johnny, but his oeuvre arguably does not justify his inflated réclame. Indeed, for some time now, he has been living off the interest from the capital he invested in his heyday. Sadly, Grass lost it long ago.

The Center for American Progress’ War on Veteran Posted By Daniel Greenfield

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/10/the-center-for-american-progress%e2%80%99-war-on-veterans/

The shameful treatment of Vietnam veterans is one of the ugliest chapters in our history and it is a chapter that the Obama Administration appears eager to revisit under the guiding inspiration of the Center for American Progress.

While spending under Obama has dramatically increased, the only part of the budget that the radical administration appears to be willing to cut is military spending. But cuts to military spending don’t just involve hardware, but also target human beings. The most shameful cuts involve dramatic increases to health care costs for veterans.

Tricare provides medical benefits to active duty personnel and their families, as well as veterans. With military salaries that are below average for Federal workers, those who serve and have served their country depend on it. After ten years of war and fifteen thousand wounded men and women, Tricare is a small payment on the debt that can never be repaid.

Unfortunately the Party of Treason, not satisfied with stabbing soldiers in the back while they were fighting, has refused to cease its campaign against them even after they have come home. The Center for American Progress, the leftist think-tank that has been described as the brains of the Democratic Party, has made Tricare into a target.