RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/07/the-global-triumph

“The fact that American civilisation is growing in so many different directions at the same time makes it much more robust then past civilisations, even while ensuring that it will always offend someone. It has always offended European sensibilities, but Europe is the past. America is the future, and it will be for a long time to come.”

Like St Peter’s Basilica, the entire city of Rome is a palimpsest on which ancient structures undergird the modern streets. Take an espresso on the Piazza Navona, and you may notice that it is exactly the shape of a Roman stadium, which of course is what it was. Beyond Rome, the sites of London and Paris were selected and developed by Roman colonial administrators. The boundaries of Roman occupation continue to divide the island of Great Britain into the nations of England, Scotland and Wales.

Just as visible as the physical traces of ancient Rome are the human ones. Italy, Spain, Portugal and France still speak languages derived from Latin. All of the countries of continental Europe, as well as the super-national European Union, still use Roman legal systems. And notwithstanding the recent influx of Muslim immigrants, the dominant religion of Europe is still the religion of Constantine—to the extent that Europeans have any religion at all.

Yet for all this continuity, the civilisation of Western Europe is not the civilisation of Rome. Western civilisation was built upon the ruins of Rome. The population of Rome is thought to have shrunk by 90 per cent (or more) following the Germanic invasions that overthrew the Roman empire. The Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Vandals all sacked Rome. The Franks established what would become modern-day France. The Burgundians and Lombards left their names on regions of France and Italy, respectively. The Anglo-Saxons gave both their name and their language to Angle-land, or England.

Western civilisation thus emerged as a hybrid of the collapsed civilisation of Rome and the culture—one hesitates to call it a “civilisation”—of the Germanic invaders who conquered it. It is the civilisation that developed in those areas of the western Roman empire that fell under the rule of German aristocracies. North Africa, which ultimately came under Arab rule, was lost to the West in the seventh century. The rural north and east of what is today Germany had never been Romanised in the first place.

Visit the historical centre of Rome today, and Western civilisation is all around you: magnificent sixteenth-century churches, grand piazzas adorned with decorative fountains, the artwork of Bernini and Michelangelo. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of almost every other city in Europe. Americans tour Europe in droves to experience these living museums for themselves. Defying the destructive force of the Reformation, mass industrialisation and two world wars, the “sweetness and light” of Western civilisation still delights and shines. And the Pope still celebrates Mass at the “new” St Peter’s, now nearly 400 years old.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/11/the-strange-case-of-white-supremacy/

Any majority population must be careful not to revert to pre-civilized tribalism and oppressing minority groups. The United States, like every other country that enjoys diverse populations has struggled from its beginning to ensure equality, sometimes unsuccessfully, and only at the cost of thousands of lives.

While the United States was founded originally mostly by those of European ancestry and was plagued by the endemic racism of the age, especially in regard to African slaves and Native Americans, nonetheless its unique Constitution, embedded within a larger framework of the Western Enlightenment, institutionalized self-reflection and the chance for amendment. America’s founding documents were unique in their singular calls for innate and universal human freedom and equality under the law that would eventually and logically demand reification of such ideals.

In other words, in America there was a real chance to overcome not American sins per se, but the ancient sins of mankind in general.

The result is that more than 243 years after its independence, the current longest-lived democracy arguably is also the world’s most racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse nation and unmatched in its efforts to promote equality.

More exceptionally, the United States did not resort to a coercive political ideology such as Stalinist Communism to unite the diverse, or embrace an all-encompassing religious orthodoxy in the manner of the dramatic spread of Islam between the 8th and 16th centuries among widely disparate peoples.

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian was the Michigan pathologist and euthanasia advocate who supported a patient’s right to die by physician-assisted suicide. His famous remark, “Dying is not a crime,” launched a public debate about the ethics of physician assisted-suicide.

Dr. Kevorkian was a pioneer in the controversial matter of physician-assisted suicide. Dubbed Dr. Death by the media, Kevorkian’s career and trials were widely publicized, and discussions about the ethics of physician-assisted suicide went mainstream. Between 1994-1997 Kevorkian was tried four times for physician-assisted suicide.

In 1990, Dr. Kevorkian was arrested and convicted of second-degree murder for his role in the physician-assisted suicide of Thomas Youk 52, a patient in the final stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Kevorkian was sentenced to 10-25 years in prison and then granted parole after serving 8 years. He devoted his last years to lecturing and changing the laws on physician-assisted suicide.

As individuals living in a free country we embrace our Constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what about our right to die? Dr. Kevorkian raised public consciousness about terminally ill patients and their right to die. The problem, of course, is the opportunity for abuse in “assisting” suicides.

Legalizing assisted suicide is legalizing self-murder, so beyond any religious opposition to “playing God,” there is the secular opposition based on the possibility of murder disguised as suicide. That brings us to “politically-assisted” suicide, and the increasingly suspicious and ever-growing Clinton family body count. WHAT??

It is impossible to ignore the growing list of individuals scheduled to testify against the Clintons who are mysteriously found dead before their court dates. Some have been ruled murders and some ruled suicides – all are suspicious. Let’s take a look at a few.

March of 2015: FBI Special Agent David Raynor was found stabbed and murdered with his own gun the day before he was scheduled to testify before the US Federal Grand Jury. Raynor was expected to expose that Clinton acted illegally to coverup the Fast and Furious scandal to protect Obama. Raynor was leading the investigation into the murder of one of the main witnesses, homicide Detective Sean Suiter, who Raynor believed had been killed before he could testify that the Obama administration, “. . .was criminally complicit in allowing guns to flow into the hands of criminals on the Mexican border.” Politically-assisted suicide?

swtotd.blogspot.com

swtotd.blogspot.com

New Hampshire’s White Mountains, with their rugged, natural beauty and the sense of peace that whispers through the Pines, Hemlocks and Spruce that comprise their forests, seemed a long distance from the mass murders in El Paso and Dayton, as well as the never-ending killing of – mostly – young, Black, inner-city males. But this is a big country and it holds people of every ethnicity, nationality and religion – most all who are good, but a few who are evil. When united, we are morally strong; when divided we are vulnerable.

What unites us is the idea of America. At our core, we love what America represents – the freedom it gives us and the opportunities it provides. Among our freedoms are those that allow us to speak up when we disagree, to protest policies that are at odds with ours. We can, in fact, insult our President. It is this personal freedom and the opportunities for social and economic advancement that attract so many to our shores.

What divides us has been the rise of extremism, driven by a sense of being ignored and by politicians who find compartmentalization of the electorate – by gender, race, religion and sexual orientation – politically opportunistic. The result is a culture that promotes identity politics and victimization; hatred is their progeny. In an August 6 op-ed for the New York Times, David Brooks wrote: “The struggle between pluralism and anti-pluralism is one of the great death struggles of our time, and it is being fought on every front.” What he wrote I believe to be true, but he did not connect anti-pluralism with politics of identity. Pluralism is preferred by those who believe in integration, not just of race, gender and religion but of ideas. It was what drove Martin Luther King, while Anti-pluralism is a consequence of those who thrive on politics of identity – be it white nationalism, Antifa, BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, LGBTQ, or neo-Nazis. These lead to politics of hate and, thence, to acts of terror. We would be wise to heed David Brooks’ call for pluralism. After all, it is the motto on the Great Seal of the United States – e Pluribus Unum.

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/289037/the-lefts-race-war

I think Kirchick’s bashing of Trump is extreme and proves no racism or deliberate bigotry…., nor is there an “aggressively race obsessed vision of America.” I post this because his description of the left is very accurate…..rsk

In just the past two weeks, Donald Trump has told four ethnic minority congresswomen, three of them natural born citizens, to “go back” to the “broken and crime infested” “countries” “from which they came,” described the African American Congressman Elijah Cummings as a “bully” and his city of Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” and picked a fight with the Rev. Al Sharpton, pronouncing him “a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score” who “Hates Whites & Cops!”

Trump’s game isn’t difficult to discern. He is practicing the same sort of resentment-based, racial-identity politics that has fueled his political rise since the earlier part of this decade, when he began expressing doubts that the first black president was actually born in the United States.

Trump’s motives are mean, his tactics distasteful, and his manner of expression bigoted and unpresidential. But in the race to see who can press harder on the race button, Trump has a worthy opponent in today’s left. Just as it is hard to see Trump as anything other than a bigot and a button-presser, it is similarly impossible to deny the radical transformation of the progressive intellectual and activist universe in the nearly three years since Trump was elected into a self-appointed politburo that is trying to impose its own aggressively race-obsessed vision on America.

Indeed, many of Trump’s opponents on the left have turned themselves into committed ideologues with a programmatic understanding of human behavior and human differences rooted in some biological component that is impossible or nearly impossible to change. The way the left talks incessantly about “white men,” or openly puts membership in victim groups above individual rights and virtues, is the essence of what most people mean by racism. Not “reverse racism”—but real, actual, racism.

NO POSTINGS UNTIL 8/13

The media responds to mass shootings in America with hyperbole, politicization and blame. The blame game is usually confined to the left. However, the dumbest opining on the issue comes from the editors of the National Review- hardly a bastion of the left.

Here is their Editorial:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/el-paso-shooting-white-supremacy-evil-ideology/

Crush This Evil

“We are contending with an evil ideology — white supremacy — that deserves to be treated by the authorities as has been the threat posed by militant Islam.”

Really?  Insanity, not political ideology drives these murderers……and the comparison with faith driven and calculated jihad is gratuitous. rsk

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/02/justice-system-allows-innocent-mans-reputation-trashed-not-fit/

EXCERPT

“Innocent until proved guilty” is – or was – one of the proudest legal doctrines of Western civilisation. It dates back to Roman law, and is particularly strong in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Why does it matter so much? I suggest two reasons. The first is about human nature. We are not always naturally fair. If we see a wrong done, we are often so angry that we wish to punish someone straightaway, without bothering to establish guilt. Society has to guard against that instinct. Otherwise, mob rule takes over.

The second reason is about human dignity. If you do not presume a person is innocent, you presume he or she is guilty. If that is the way a society thinks, the authorities gain terrifying power over the individual. The burden of proof lies on him. If he faces hostility, that word “burden” is apposite. If you have to show you did not commit any crime of which anyone accuses you, how on earth do you do it?

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/01/the-war-on-the-obvious/

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/01

When was the last time you were called racist? If a supporter of President Trump, it’s a safe bet the gross epithet is regularly seared upon your forehead. Always, by those who self-anoint as progressive.

Such a charge, once preserved for the truly primitive of mind, is now stamped and singed on anyone who dares to disagree with anything issuing from the left side of the political aisle.

To point out the obvious is “racist.” This week, President Trump’s blistering comments on Baltimore’s cadaverous state invited the familiar threadbare cries. Perhaps, because that city is majority-black. Or perhaps because that term is the only resort of those defending the indefensible.

Because Baltimore is indefensible. And its denizens deserve better.

President Trump’s greatest gift is his penchant for forcing his foes to defend the indefensible. Baltimore, like many Fishtowns across post-industrial America, is Hell, for the forgotten majority, at least.

Baltimore condemns its citizens with the country’s worst schools and mops up more murders than El Salvador. Its poverty rate is nearly twice the national average.

This scandal, of course, has nothing to do with a congressman’s melanin density. In the 1950s, city residents, buoyed by chrome, copper, and steel industry jobs, enjoyed a 7 percent pay bump on the average American. The number earning middle-class wages was one-fifth higher, poverty one-fifth lower than average America.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-would-we-do-without-the-word-racism-11564782112

If the country had a National Language Commission, and I were appointed commissioner, the first word I would put in cold storage—filed permanently away beside the N-word, the C-word, the K-word and other prohibited words—would be “racism.” In our day the word has been used imprecisely, promiscuously, perniciously and well beyond abundantly. If you are politically on the left, racism is what you accuse people of who don’t agree with you. If you are on the right, you can accuse them, I suppose, of socialism, but it doesn’t carry anything like the same resonance in moral opprobrium or self-awarded virtue as does racism.

The racist, if we can use the dictionary definition, believes that all members of a particular race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, which distinguish it as superior or inferior to other races. The true racist of course feels his own race is superior, and thereby he hasn’t any difficulty in discriminating or otherwise ill-treating members of other races, sometimes through government policy—as formerly under apartheid in South Africa or during the strict segregation once pervasive in the American South—or sometimes through ugly personal actions.

I am old enough to remember Jim Crow racism in action. When I lived in Arkansas in the early 1960s, there were still “colored” and white drinking fountains, separate bus and movie seating, and obvious differences in the quality of school buildings and other facilities available to blacks, and most people made no bones about it. Blacks were suppressed, oppressed and made to feel inferior in nearly every way that local governments could devise. The word racism wasn’t much in vogue in that place, or anywhere else, at that time. The majority of people who could rightly be called racist would not know what you were talking about if you accused them of racism.