RUTHFULLY YOURS

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“Conservatives are not reactionaries. As Burke said, ‘we must reform in orderto conserve,’ or, in more modern  idiom: we must adapt. But we adapt to change in the name of continuity, in order to conserve what we are and what we have “Roger Scruton (1944-)

Labels are misleading. The terms “liberal” or “conservative” confuse substance with abstractions. To paraphrase Humpty Dumpty, labels mean whatever we want them to mean. If told I am conservative is it meant I am a tightwad in fiscal matters? Does it mean I favor martial law to a democratic process? Does it mean I am antediluvian in cultural ways? Does it mean I am anti-progress, preferring the past to the future? Does it mean I am racist, xenophobic or misogynist? Does it mean all, or none of the above? I know what I mean when I claim to be conservative, but do others?  For me, conservatism is about freedom – free to speak, write, assemble and pray. But it also includes respect for tradition and for the opinions of others; being responsible for one’s actions and accountable to other. It means a belief in the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and a commitment to values, like honor and duty. I believe strongly in family and in loyalty, and that the Constitution provided freedom for religion, not from religion. I believe government is an instrument of the people, not the other way around; that we must be ruled by laws, not men; it assumes a vigorous military, but one reflective of the nation’s citizens and under the control of a civilian president; it is the welcoming of legal immigrants and those legitimately seeking asylum; and it is an understanding that debt, while having useful purposes, when excessive has consequences, including political pressure to keep interest rates artificially low.

The subtitle of Mr. Scruton’s short book is “An Introduction to the Great Tradition,” and that is what this book is – a primer on conservativism, a guide through the history of the discipline.  “…modern conservatism arose as a defence of the individual against potential oppressors, and an endorsement of popular sovereignty.” But it also recognizes the role communities and government must play in civil society. In institutions and traditions, there are kernels of wisdom without which, Mr. Scruton writes, “…the exercise of freedom is as likely to destroy human rights and entitlements as to enhance them.”

My friend and e-pal Sydney Williams, has, to my great regret, announced that he will no longer write these monthly columns which so many of us enjoy so much. For more of his good writing and opinions go to:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=sydney+williams&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Dear Mary: Letters Home from the 10th Mountain Division (1944–1945) by Williams III, Sydney M. | Jul 19, 2019

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The world is complicated. It has always been so. Resources are limited, but man’s mind is limitless. We live on a planet with just over two acres of inhabitable land per inhabitant. But that fact, and the limits implied, speaks to man’s remarkable ability to survive and thrive. But neither surviving nor thriving is easy, nor can we assume we always will. Man is a social animal. He has survived through intuition, and he has thrived through what Adam Smith called the division of labor that increases social and economic dependency. To advance his interests, man created communities, governments, rule of law and markets. Two hundred years ago, no one could have conceived of the social, cultural and technological advances that allow us to live today as we do. No one today can now predict what the world two hundred years hence will be like. Will man blow himself up? Will natural forces cause our extinction? Will warring factions and competing economic systems persist and worsen? Or, will technology and cultural changes continue to improve living standards? Will we live in harmony? No one knows.

What we do know is that classically liberal governments and free markets have allowed unprecedented improvement in living standards and extensions of life. Now, free market capitalism, which goes hand-in-hand with democracy, is under attack by progressives who are ignorant of history and who do not understand basic economics. The question, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin from 1776, is can we keep our republican government and the capitalist system we have created, which has served us and the world so well? Or will we make a radical turn toward socialism? We cannot take past successes for granted.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/06/islam_terrorism_and_censorship.html

In his newest book, Paul Cliteur, author and jurisprudence professor at Leiden University, examines a largely forgotten 1987 German television comedy skit that sparked Muslim protests. Cliteur asserts that the incident, involving Dutch comedian Rudi Carrell, became the forerunner for other protests, many of them deadly violent, that now characterize the ongoing conflict between Islamic theoterrorism and Western free speech. In Theoterrorism v. Freedom of Speech:  From Incident to Precedent (Amsterdam University Press, 2019), Cliteur calls the Carrell incident a turning point in global politics. It made the West conclude that offending Islam was a global capital offense and it brought about the start of a precipitous decline in Western civil liberties. 

Born in the Netherlands, Carrell began appearing on German television in the mid-1960s, ultimately attracting 20 million viewers. In 1987, eight years after the Ayatollah Khomeini established an anti-Western theocracy in Iran and instituted strict Islamic sharia, Carrell depicted women throwing their underwear at Khomeini’s feet. The sketch poked fun at the Ayatollah’s edict forbidding Iranian women to show their hair or body shape.

After the show aired, an Iranian ambassador complained to the German government that Muslims “all over the world” had hurt feelings. Iranian consulates in West Berlin and Hamburg closed. A Frankfurt-to-Tehran flight was delayed for six hours while the ground crew, under Tehran’s command, protested. Iran expelled two West German diplomats and Iranian students demanded an apology during a government-incited protest at the West German Embassy. Carrell received death threats and required police protection.  

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/13/an-interview-with-thomas-sowell-on-discrimination-race-and-social-justice/

The famed economist and social theorist sat down to talk about race, discrimination, crime rates, and cultural attitude shifts.

A newly updated version of Thomas Sowell’s book, “Discrimination and Disparities,” came out this spring. The author and famed economist sat down with writer David Hogberg to talk about it and his life’s work.

David Hogberg: I want to read to you something that a currently very popular actress by the name of Brie Larson said at a recent awards show. She stated that, “USC Annenberg’s Inclusiveness Initiative released findings that 67 percent of the top critics reviewing the 100 highest grossing movies in 2017 were white males.  Less than a quarter were white women and less than 10 percent were unrepresented men. Only 2.5 percent of those top critics were women of color. Now you’re probably thinking right now that … doesn’t represent the country I live in. And that’s true. This is a huge disconnect from the U.S. population breakdown of 30 percent white men, 30 percent white women, 20 percent men of color, and 20 percent women of color. So, why does that matter? … If you make a movie that is a love letter to women of color, there is an insanely low chance a woman of color will be able to see your movie and review your movie … We need to be conscious of our bias and do our part to make sure that everyone is in the room.”

That’s an example of the main fallacy that you expose in your book, correct?

Thomas Sowell:  It’s one of the many fallacies. My God! We could play the same game with basketball and get even greater skewed representation. Blacks are the vast majority of basketball players in the NBA. That quote is downright silly.

What’s become so frustrating to me over the years is people who assume that if people or events are not evenly represented, then that’s some deviation from the norm. But you can read through reams of what scholars have written and find that nowhere is this norm to be found. You can read people like Gradell and others who have studied internationally various cultural events, and they say again and again that nowhere do they find a distribution of people who is representative of the population of the larger society.

So [people like Larson] are taking something that no one can find and making it a norm, the deviations from which should cause the government to intervene to correct this supposedly rare thing.

Hogberg: What is the “Invincible Fallacy”?

https://pjmedia.com/trending/wolves-in-creeps-clothing-michael-wolff-and-naomi-wolf-exposed/

Naomi Wolf was hired as a consultant by Al Gore in 1999 when he prepared for a presidential campaign. She was charged with making him  an “alpha” man instead of a “beta” man who did not emphasize his masculinity….rsk

Let’s turn our attention for a moment to two authors, Wolf and Wolff. Feminist icon Naomi Wolf is reeling from a nonfiction fiasco that has caused her horrible and very public embarrassment. Irresponsible fictionalizer Michael Wolff is apparently incapable of shame.

What do they have in common? Not much, beyond the fact that they’re both bi-coastal elites who share a loathing for President Donald Trump.

In Wolf’s case, a perfect encapsulation of the PR nightmare befalling her latest work is presented by the Post Millennial’s Libby Emmons in “Naomi Wolf Was Destroyed by Her Research Bias.” While an author is ultimately responsible for fact-checking content, in this case, the “research bias” runs deep. The book started out as a thesis paper, which means it had to have been green-lit by both academia and New York publishing to ever see the light of day. These gatekeepers, steeped in leftist bias, failed to catch the monumental error that serves as the premise of Wolf’s book: the assertion that homosexuals were executed in Victorian England.

As for Wolff, how Trump could have allowed such an individual to plant himself on a couch in the West Wing for an extended period of time in quest of a truth-challenged tell-all is something that heartland Trumpservatives will never understand. Steve Bannon had a lot to do with it, and we all know how that turned out.

Unlike the chattering classes who would see traditionalist, sovereign America overrun and enervated in the name of globalism, Trump’s ardent supporters are not interested in gossipy, inconsequential trash-talk among members of the so-called cultural and managerial elite. Who gives a damn what Omarosa Newman or Rupert Murdoch think of the president or vice versa?  That Mr. Trump has kept promises and keeps trying to keep promises on issues they care about is what matters.