RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/beto-orourke-democrats-condemn-america-as-racist/

Slavery was America’s grave sin, but to pretend racism is the essence of the country is an odious and reductive lie.

Beto O’Rourke has taken the measure of America and found it wanting.

“This country, though we would like to think otherwise,” he intoned over the weekend, “was founded on racism, has persisted through racism, and is racist today.”

This is now a mainstream sentiment in the Democratic party. Bernie Sanders said earlier this year that the United States was “created” in large part “on racist principles.” The New York Times has begun the so-called 1619 Project, marking the 400th anniversary of the importation of slaves from Africa.

The series seeks nothing less than “to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

It is certainly true that an American nation existed prior to the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and that slavery was its great sin, with permutations still felt today. But to pretend that racism is the essence of America and constituted one of the country’s founding principles is an odious and reductive lie.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/19/trump-slapped-the-country-awake-but-his-opponents-still-sleep/

Our new political landscape is exposing the limitations and biases of those whose well-being is dependent upon our old political landscape.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will introduced me to conservatism. As an energetic journalism major in the post-Watergate ’70s intent on changing the world, I subscribed to Mother Jones, The Progressive, and Newsweek magazines for guidance and soaked up everything those proud left-leaning journals dispensed. And then, on the inside back page of Newsweek, I’d come across Will’s biweekly counter to virtually everything else I had read.

What a wordsmith! What a brilliant, encyclopedic mind. How could someone advocating for those awful non-progressive things he championed make so much sense? In the tug-o-war for hearts and minds, I was the tape on the rope. Mother Jones fought spiritedly. But Will, in time, pulled me across the line. Which makes it doubly hard to watch him repeat the errors so many others make when considering Donald Trump.

Those errors include—let’s use some worn but applicable clichés—emphasizing style over substance, missing the forest for the trees, getting caught up in the times (something you wouldn’t expect a history buff like Will to do) and indulging a detestable Beltway culture.

The errors were on display earlier this summer when Will appeared at the 2019 Aspen Ideas Festival to promote his new book, The Conservative Sensibility.

Will told his interviewer, PBS’s Judy Woodruff, that Trump’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in its pages “because it’s a book about ideas.” (Audience gets the joke and chuckles knowingly.) He said Trump isn’t a conservative, a charge he also levied against the Republican Party he quit four years ago. (Actually, Trump governs more conservatively than most Republicans in Congress.)

Donald J. TrumpVerified account @realDonaldTrump

Israel was very respectful & nice to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, allowing her permission to visit her “grandmother.” As soon as she was granted permission, she grandstanded & loudly proclaimed she would not visit Israel. Could this possibly have been a setup? Israel acted appropriately!

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/18/cosmic-injustice/

One of the weirdest characteristics of our global politicians and moral censors is their preference to voice cosmic justice rather than to address less abstract sin within their own purview or authority. These progressive virtue mongers see themselves as citizens of the world rather than of the United States and thus can impotently theorize about problems elsewhere when they cannot solve those in their own midst.

Big-city mayors are especially culpable when it comes to ignoring felonies in their midst, preferring to hector the misdemeanors of the universe. Notice how New York Mayor Bill De Blasio lords over the insidious deterioration of his city while he lectures on cosmic white supremacy.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg used to sermonize to the nation about gun-control, global warming, the perils of super-sized soft drinks, smoking, and fatty-foods in his efforts to virtue signal his moral fides—even as his New York was nearly paralyzed by the 2010 blizzard that trapped millions of his city’s residents in their homes due to inept and incompetent city efforts to remove snow. Or is the “Bloomberg syndrome” worse than that—in the sense that sounding saintly in theory psychologically compensates for being powerless in fact? Or is it a fashion tic of the privileged to show abstract empathy?

In the last years of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governorship, Arnold more or less gave up on the existential crises of illegal immigration, sanctuary cities, soaring taxes, water shortages, decrepit roads and bridges, homelessness, plummeting public school performance, and a huge exodus out of state of middle-class Californians.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274656/tlaib-and-omar-werent-banned-disagreeing-israel-robert-spencer

It is unlikely to come as a surprise to anyone except the most blinkered Leftist ideologue that Ilhan Omar’s response to being banned from entering Israel, along with her fellow antisemitic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, was outstandingly disingenuous. But she knows, when she retails her outrageous falsehoods, that the establishment media will never call her on them or reveal the true depths of her alliance with jihadis and agitation against Israel.

“The irony of the ‘only democracy’ in the Middle East making such a decision,” said Omar, “is that it is both an insult to democratic values and a chilling response to a visit by government officials from an allied nation.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to restore some realism and honesty to the discussion, saying: “As a free and vibrant democracy,” he said, “Israel is open to critics and criticism, with one exception: Israeli law prohibits the entry into Israel of those who call for, and work to impose, boycotts on Israel, as do other democracies that prevent the entry of people believed to be damaging to the country.”

There’s the rub. Omar and Tlaib are not just Congresswomen with opinions that are critical of Israel. They are not just spokesmen; they are activists. They are active apologists for the jihad terror networks Hamas and Hizballah. The Washington Examiner reported in May that “Rep. Ilhan Omar appeared to take the side of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Sunday night after terrorists fired hundreds of rockets at civilian targets in Israel this weekend.” Omar tweeted: “How many more protesters must be shot, rockets must be fired, and little kids must be killed until the endless cycle of violence ends? The status quo of occupation and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unsustainable. Only real justice can bring about security and lasting peace.” About Hamas’ genocidal incitement and celebration of the murders of Israeli civilians she was silent. Nor has she ever uttered a murmur of protest against the fact that Hamas is dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel, which, if it ever happened, would result in the deaths of millions of Israelis.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-isnt-the-one-dividing-us-by-race-11566158729

Long before the El Paso massacre, President Trump’s political opponents accused him of sowing “division” with his “racist language.” Mr. Trump “exploits race,” “uses race for his gain,” is engaged in a “racially divisive reprise” of his 2016 campaign, stokes “racial resentments,” and puts “race at the fore,” the New York Times has reported over the past several months.

Yet Mr. Trump rarely uses racial categories in his speech or his tweets. It is the media and Democratic leaders who routinely characterize individuals and groups by race and issue race-based denunciations of large parts of the American polity.

Some examples: “As race dominates the political conversation, 10 white Democratic candidates will take the stage” (the Washington Post); Mr. Trump’s rally audiences are “overwhelmingly white” (multiple sources); your son’s “whiteness is what protects him from not [sic] being shot” by the police ( Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand ); white candidates need to be conscious of “white privilege” (South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg ); “white supremacy manifests itself” in the criminal-justice, immigration and health-care systems ( Sen. Cory Booker ); “ Michael Brown was murdered by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri” ( Sen. Elizabeth Warren ); whiteness is “the very core” of Mr. Trump’s power, whereas his “predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness” (Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic).

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/17/spare-peace-love-mythology-woodstock-nothing-phoney-festival/

It was fifty years ago this week that Woodstock stopped the Vietnam War and ushered in a new era of peace, love and understanding – sorry, that should read when 400,000 hippies sat in mud sharing one toilet for every 800 people like a bunch of huge overgrown toddlers staging a dirty protest. They had turned their backs on conventional society but when it turned out that they couldn’t even feed themselves, the ladies of the local Jewish community centre prepared 30,000 sandwiches which were handed out by local nuns.

Despite their railing against authority, more than 300 off-duty policemen were drafted in to keep order along with several hundred State Troopers and personnel from a nearby airport base to airlift the precious performers. One hopes they were being paid more than the onsite workers who were on a miserable $1.60 per hour minimum wage compared to, say, Santana, who were getting $2,000 per hour.

But at least none of them were amongst the three deaths that occurred including a man run over in his sleeping bag by a never-identified tractor driver and an 18-year-old Marine who had survived Vietnam but overdosed on some of the nasty drugs circulating, many of which were laced with rat poison. 

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/16/the-mountebank

Some time ago, I noted the irreconcilable difference between the Left and the rest of America: the majority of our fellow citizens believe America is an inherently good nation that continues its pursuit of a more perfect union; the Left believes America is an inherently evil nation that must be transformed fundamentally into an oppressive socialist state—at best.

For the Left to win this existential argument, it must distort and revile America’s history to destroy the truth of American Exceptionalism. If the past is evil, the present has no choice but to reject America’s history and its defenders; and to embrace the dishonest leftist ideology and the agenda of those who loathe America.

This is a dangerous devolution of the classical American political paradigm, in which both antagonists, conservatives and liberals, agreed America was an exceptional, fundamentally decent nation but differed about how to effectuate a more perfect union. This devolution has several causes, but notable is the incestuous relationship between the leftist media and left-wing academics. 

But, then, what can one expect when citizens subsidize leftist “professors” who use their positions to indoctrinate the hatred of America; and subscribe to a hubristic media that have conveniently jettisoned the veneer of objectivity in favor of the “righteous” left-wing propagandizing of “accountability journalism”?

What one can expect is this: the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project.”

According to Mara Gay of the New York Times’ editorial board, the 1619 Project “[i]n the days and weeks to come, we will publish essays demonstrating that nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/08/how_al_sharpton_abandoned_africas_slaves_.html

The eminent African-American economist Glenn Loury recently wondered in the New York Times why leading Democrats would defend Al Sharpton, a man who is a blatant anti-Semite, an anti-white racist, and to many, a simple con man.  Joe Biden calls him “a champion in the fight for civil rights.” Elizabeth Warren says “he has dedicated his life to the fight for justice for all,” and Kamala Harris lauds him as a man who “has spent his life fighting for what’s right.” Records show that President Obama had Sharpton visit his White House 118 times.

This, after Sharpton’s many outrages: the Tawana Brawley rape hoax of 1987, the anti-Jewish Crown Heights riots of 1991, and the firebombing of a Jewish-owned Harlem fashion boutique in 1995.

Loury suggests that any one of these things should have disqualified Sharpton from national platforms, along with any praise by Democratic Party leaders. But there’s something else, something no less repugnant, and perhaps even more shocking, that should obliterate once and for all the perception of Al Sharpton as a tough guy who never buckles when it comes to defending his race.

Al Sharpton is betraying black people currently enslaved in Africa. He went there. He spoke to them. He promised the slaves he met that he would awaken American blacks to their plight, but then he abandoned them. He abandoned them, I believe, because they are enslaved by Arab Muslims.   A review of just how this came about should be instructive.

In 2001, as Sharpton contemplated a run for president in the 2004 election, he made a trip to Sudan to verify reports of the ongoing enslavement of Christian blacks there by Arab Muslims. Reports were emerging of Arabs from northern Sudan raiding black Christian villages in the south of Africa’s then-largest country, killing the men and enslaving the women and children. (Full disclosure: At the time, I headed a movement to educate the public about modern-day slavery. We worked with the human rights organization Christian Solidarity International, which over the years redeemed tens of thousands of slaves in Sudan who were returned to their villages.)

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-mccarthy-israel-tlaib-omar-trump

“Israel has hypnotized the world. May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” So says Rep. Ilhan Omar, D., Minn. Well, it’s a free country. Omar is not only entitled to her political opinions; she is entitled to express them as long as she avoids unlawful incitement.

The same goes for Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D. Mich., who advocates the “one-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a final settlement in which there would no longer be a Jewish state and the territory that is now Israel would gradually become Palestine. Omar and Tlaib are members of the hard left, self-styled “squad.” They are both BDS zealots. That is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement by which opponents of the Jewish state seek its extirpation.

Israel later – graciously – agreed to allow Tlaib to visit her aged and ailing grandmother in the West Bank, provided she didn’t use the trip to undermine her host. But the Jewish State was on solid ground with its initial denial. After all, the liberty to express one’s views does not imply immunity from the natural consequences of doing so. Among these is that the nation Omar and Tlaib seek to destabilize and ultimately dismantle may deny them entry.

That is precisely what the Israeli government did on Thursday. President Trump not only endorsed the move; he appears to have catalyzed it with a tweet, asserting that Israel would “show great weakness” if it permitted a visit from Omar and Tlaib because, according to the president, they “hate Israel & all Jewish people.”

While this rhetoric is abrasive in the Trumpian style, Israel’s exclusion of Omar and Tlaib makes eminent sense. Since when must a country, particularly one that daily confronts a terrorism challenge the likes of which we have never experienced, roll out the red carpet for aliens who mean it harm and encourage its enemies?

Naturally, because the alliance of Islamists and leftists calls the tune to which our media-Democrat complex dances, we are enduring gaseous denunciations from official Washington. Progressive groups are echoing Omar’s latest blather about how the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “insult[ed] democratic values” (as if a nation’s survival were not a democratic value). Despite this precious sensitivity about insults, Omar could not help herself but add that President Trump is an “Islamophobe.” That term, shrewdly developed by sharia supremacists, intimates that critical examination of Islam – particularly, its doctrinal calls for jihad against non-believers – is racist.