RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/29/the-head-scratching-insanity-of-todays-left-wing-mob/

Far too many of us are dismissed, or even disdained, for having logical minds, rejecting junk science, and having a semblance of intellectual honesty because those things do not fit the dogma of the progressives and the pecuniary interests of their boosters.

As I listen to and observe various news stories (that I assume are accurate) lately, I wonder whether I have gone mad. My misfortune seems to be that I am rational, reasoning, reflective, and as much as possible intellectually honest, which seems to pass as a mental disorder—or, at least, a rare anomaly—these days.

I read that Jussie Smollett’s fairy godmother, Cook County state’s attorney Kim Foxx, has declared that her office will not prosecute as a felony shoplifting valued at less than $1,000 in goods. Doesn’t that mean that shoplifters can just make multiple trips and wink at the store security staff on the way out? Since when did shoplifting become a lucrative job with minimal risk?

Where is the outrage? What am I missing?

Then I try to follow the entire impeachment exercise and really scratch my head. The only actual facts seem to be that lethal military aid to Ukraine, which was withheld completely during the Obama years, was delayed by a few weeks this summer; that President Trump mentioned a desire to see Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, investigated to determine if corruption was involved in Hunter’s inexplicable (other than influence peddling) job at Burisma; and that the aid flowed and the investigation never happened. Records of all the actual communications with Ukraine seem to be available.

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/HksD7TBkU

Police in the town of Monsey, where the attack occurred, say they apprehended the suspected attacker; Jewish organization tweets images of large emergency response near a house of a Hasidic rabbi, next door to a synagogue.

A man attacked a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home north of New York City late Saturday, stabbing and wounding at least five people with a large knife or a machete before fleeing in a vehicle, police said.

Although police said the extent of the injuries was unclear, sources told The New York Post that at least one victim was in a critical condition. Between 50 and 100 people were reportedly inside the house when the attack occurred.
According to the report in the Post, the attacker slashed five people inside the rabbi’s house and attempted to enter a local temple, but failed to gain access. The rabbi’s home is next door to the synagogue.

https://www.ynetnews.com
From parliaments to campuses, verbal and physical assaults on Jews are increasing, showing that ‘The Longest Hatred,’ deemed taboo for much of the second half of the 20th century, is once again being mainstreamed and normalized
The Simon Wiesenthal Center this week released its annual list of Top Ten Worst Anti-Semitic & Anti-Israel Incidents at a press conference in New York.
The index comes amid an upsurge in violent anti-Semitic attacks throughout the globe, including in the United States, long considered the foremost safe haven for Jews.
When factoring in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, a trend seemingly emerges: “The Longest Hatred” that for much of the second half of the 20th century was deemed taboo and therefore suppressed, is once again in the process of being mainstreamed and normalized.
“The bottom line is that it was a terrible year, by virtue of the fact that Jewish houses of worship have been targeted with murderous actions,” says Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean, Director Global Social Action Agenda at the Wiesenthal Center.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/opinion/jewish-culture-genius-iq.html

An eminent Lithuanian rabbi is annoyed that his yeshiva students devote their lunch breaks to playing soccer instead of discussing Torah. The students, intent on convincing their rav of the game’s beauty, invite him to watch a professional match. At halftime, they ask what he thinks.

“I have solved your problem,” the rabbi says.

“How?”

“Give one ball to each side, and they will have nothing to fight over.”

I have this (apocryphal) anecdote from Norman Lebrecht’s new book, “Genius & Anxiety,” an erudite and delightful study of the intellectual achievements and nerve-wracked lives of Jewish thinkers, artists, and entrepreneurs between 1847 and 1947. Sarah Bernhardt and Franz Kafka; Albert Einstein and Rosalind Franklin; Benjamin Disraeli and (sigh) Karl Marx — how is it that a people who never amounted even to one-third of 1 percent of the world’s population contributed so seminally to so many of its most pathbreaking ideas and innovations?

The common answer is that Jews are, or tend to be, smart. When it comes to Ashkenazi Jews, it’s true. “Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average I.Q. of any ethnic group for which there are reliable data,” noted one 2005 paper. “During the 20th century, they made up about 3 percent of the U.S. population but won 27 percent of the U.S. Nobel science prizes and 25 percent of the ACM Turing awards. They account for more than half of world chess champions.”

But the “Jews are smart” explanation obscures more than it illuminates. Aside from the perennial nature-or-nurture question of why so many Ashkenazi Jews have higher I.Q.s, there is the more difficult question of why that intelligence was so often matched by such bracing originality and high-minded purpose. One can apply a prodigious intellect in the service of prosaic things — formulating a war plan, for instance, or constructing a ship. One can also apply brilliance in the service of a mistake or a crime, like managing a planned economy or robbing a bank.

But as the story of the Lithuanian rabbi suggests, Jewish genius operates differently. It is prone to question the premise and rethink the concept; to ask why (or why not?) as often as how; to see the absurd in the mundane and the sublime in the absurd. Ashkenazi Jews might have a marginal advantage over their gentile peers when it comes to thinking better. Where their advantage more often lies is in thinking different.

Where do these habits of mind come from?

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-populist-decade/

History doesn’t follow a schedule. The events that define an era often happen before or after the onset of a new decade. It’s been said that the Sixties didn’t begin on January 1, 1960, but on November 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. They didn’t end on January 1, 1970, but on August 9, 1974, when Richard Nixon resigned as president.

Keep this in mind as you look at retrospectives of the 2010s. The calendar decade may be drawing to a close, but the tendencies, ideas, movements, sentiments, and personalities associated with the past 10 years may not be quite ready to leave the stage. The underlying causes of national populism have not disappeared. Our times continue to be shaped by immigration, terrorism, and the cultural distance between voters without college degrees and the credentialed elites who govern them. It would be a mistake to follow the advice of the Bloomberg editor who wrote in a recent headline, “Populism Will Probably Just Go Away Soon, So Relax.” On the contrary: The populist epoch may be only beginning.

To say that the ’10s began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, doesn’t tell the whole story. The first shoots of national populism were visible by the time of the Wall Street panic. In 2005, the Dutch and French both voted against a proposed European Constitution in an expression of discontent with the EU. In 2006, massive rallies of immigrants to the United States, some waving the flags of their countries of origin, sparked a backlash against proposed immigration reform. That was also the year that Congress, against the wishes of the Bush administration, blocked a proposal to transfer management of six American ports to a company in Dubai. And on August 29, 2008, John McCain announced that Sarah Palin would be his running mate.

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/67587-socialisms-cyclical-appeal-2019-12-26

Like swallows returning to Capistrano, socialism makes an appearance on a regular cycle.

The current presidential campaign features self-confessed socialist Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who doesn’t self-describe as a socialist, but whose policies closely resemble those of Sanders.

Sanders has the luxury of condemning millionaires and billionaires from his comfortable life as a multi-millionaire. As Forbes magazine has reported, “Sanders … has amassed an estimated $2.5 million fortune from real estate, investments, government pensions — and earnings from three books.” Sanders is also quoted, “I wrote a bestselling book. If you write a bestselling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”

Sanders appears to favor capitalism for himself, but he’s against it for everyone else.

Socialism is a false doctrine. It sells itself to new generations who know little about it. They promote it by promising “free stuff,” along with envy of the successful.

Why does socialism continue to have appeal in America? Part of the reason is adherents claim it is fairer than capitalism. It isn’t fair, socialists say, that some people make more money than others.

Socialism and its twin sister liberalism have always been about feelings, rather than outcome. That so many liberal programs have failed to achieve stated objectives does not matter to the left. Apparently, it is intent, not success, that counts. When liberals or socialists fail, they simply go on to new errors.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/give-dont-govern/

Big hearts are a good thing. Big government is no substitute for them.

This week, children may learn about that greedy man, Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge is selfish until ghosts scare him into thinking about others’ well-being, not just his own.

Good for the ghosts.

But the way Scrooge addresses others’ needs matters.

Today’s advocates of equality, compassion, increased spending on education, health care, etc., say “we care” but demand that government do the work.

Controlling other people with the power of government doesn’t prove you care.

If you want to help the poor, clean the environment, improve the arts. Great! Please do.

But if you are compassionate, then you’ll spend your own money on your vision. You will volunteer your work and encourage others to volunteer theirs, by charity or commerce. You don’t force others to do what you think is best.

But government is not voluntary.

Government has no money of its own. Whatever it gives away, it first must take from others through taxes.

If you vote for redistribution of wealth, welfare benefits, new Medicare spending or free education, you can tell yourself you’re “generous.”

John Dingell called Donald Trump an “imbecil” but when he died President Trump lowered the American flag in his honor. The widow Dingell responded by voting for impeachment. The President mused that the late Senator might be in hell and even Republicans gripped their corsets and denounced him.

Please read these two columns on John Dingell’s “legacy.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/dingell_and_civility_in_politics.html

Dingell and civility in politics By Matthew May

John Dingell probably would have laughed at President Donald Trump’s allusion that Dingell was perhaps “looking up” at the political scene. It is no exaggeration to say that of all of the politicians on the scene since 1955 (Dingell’s first year in the House of Representatives), nobody knew better than he that politics ain’t beanbag. Crude jokes and allusions are part of the game. 

During one of my two stints as an intern in his offices, Dingell would often jovially announce that he was stopping into the bathroom by saying “Time to salute the president” (who happened to be Bill Clinton at the time). He was not above telling what he thought were amusing stories about Ronald Reagan’s forgetfulness at the 40th president’s expense.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/hellish-legacy-dingell-family-daniel-greenfield/

The Hellish Legacy of the Dingell Family If you’re going to drain the swamp, you’ve gotta call it out. Daniel Greenfield.

A decade ago, Time Magazine unveiled an in-depth article on the death of Detroit. One of the politicians whom the article blamed for Detroit’s woes was Rep. John Dingell.The Dingell clan has held a congressional seat outside Detroit since 1932. Their 87-year tenure has not coincidentally coincided with the decline of a thriving industrial city into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/22/the-era-of-good-fascism/

If and when fascism comes to America, it will not arrive with jackboots, stiff arms, and military uniforms. To modern progressives, laws are fluid, to be enforced when they champion the “good,” to be ignored or subverted when they empower the “bad.”

Consider the recent statements and acts of iconic progressive celebrities.

Jane Fonda is chronically furious. This time she directed her wrath at those who disagree about the urgency of ending the entire fossil fuel industry and ruining the current economy. Her idea is to put climate “deniers” on trial for incorrect speech. So much for the First Amendment. “Now, because of the fossil fuel industry, it’s too late for moderation,” Fonda says. “And given the emergency, it’s those who believe in moderation, in pre-Trump business as usual, who are truly delusional. And those who lie and continue to lie about what they’re doing to the environment should be put on trial.”

Green teenage heartthrob Greta Thunberg has a different solution for those who disagree with her orthodox view on “climate change”: “World leaders are still trying to run away from their responsibilities, but we have to make sure they cannot do that. We will make sure that we put them against the wall, and they will have to do their job to protect our futures.”

If Thunberg is truly worried about past government decisions that have threatened the world, she might study Swedish history and ask why her forefathers sold iron ore to the Nazi war machine—without which it could not have waged the war it did—and often threw in Swedish transport in the bargain.

https://www.city-journal.org/democrats-identity-politics

“It’s not the first time, and probably won’t be the last, that the Democratic political class has failed to heed the message that those who live by identity politics often die by identity politics.”

The top Democratic candidates will soon take the stage at the next debate, and oh boy, are party leaders squirming. Up until late last week, when Andrew Yang made the cutoff by a hair, all six of those making their pitch were white—#debatesowhite, as the hashtag called it. Worse yet, half of those Caucasians are old enough to be carrying Medicare cards. As Frank Bruni wrote in last week’s Sunday column, “for a party that celebrates diversity, pitches itself to underdogs and prides itself on being future-minded and youth-oriented, that’s a freaky, baffling turn of events.”

Some blamed the freaky turn on billionaire money crowding out the merely rich little guys, while others pointed a finger at the DNC for a dysfunctional qualifying system and a primary calendar privileging Iowa and New Hampshire, both largely white states. Also popular is the theory of “electability”—if voters’ top priority is nominating someone who can beat Donald Trump, white old-timers seem like the safest bet. But the facts behind #debatesowhite suggest that, despite the best efforts of progressives and the party establishment to hype 2020 candidates in terms of their race, gender, and LGBTQ status, the Democratic rank-and-file have limited use for identity politics.

Remember that the Dems started the year with a historically diverse field: two blacks, an Asian, a Hispanic, and an out gay man. In the following months, a sizable cluster of women joined the fray. Finally, Americans would see a field that “looked like America.” Yet 12 months later, all the nonwhite candidates—except Yang, who has explicitly disavowed identity politics—are either going or gone. Even Kamala Harris, whose Jamaican father and Indian mother made her intersectionally intersectional—black, Asian, female, and immigrant to boot—will not be standing in front of a podium.