RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2019/04/12/jordan-peterson-and-the-new-chivalry/

In his recent appearance at Liberty University, Jordan Peterson delivered this verdict on the dominant attitude toward masculinity among our society’s elites: “I don’t think we do a very good job at the moment of encouraging men. We have this idea that there’s something intrinsically oppressive about the patriarchy and about masculinity in general. And I think that’s nonsense. I think that strong, honest, truthful, courageous men pursuing noble goals is of great benefit to everyone, male and female alike.” Members of the student audience applauded loudly, little knowing that not 10 minutes later, a scene would unfold in which Peterson would have an opportunity to match action to words.

By now, tens of thousands of people have seen the clip of the desperate young man who slipped past security to rush the stage and appeal to Peterson for help. The high-definition video feed was cut, but amateur footage shows Peterson leaving his seat and following David Nasser, Liberty University’s Campus Pastor, to engage. Nasser assures the troubled boy that he is “in the right place,” telling security to stand down while he leads the audience in prayer. As the student collapses in sobs, Peterson can be seen kneeling down to put a calming hand on his heaving shoulders. After the student is escorted offstage, the video feed comes back up as Nasser and Peterson return to their seats. Peterson seems shaken and visibly moved to tears.The whole vignette plays out in less than two minutes. Yet it affords an opportunity for reflection—by shedding light not only on the specific nature of Jordan Peterson’s appeal, but also on the larger question of what masculine virtue can and should look like in the modern age.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/15/wikileaks-or-the-washington-post/

The imbroglio du jour of the political class is the question of whether Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder arrested last week in London, is a hero or a villain. Is he a journalist entitled to special treatment or a criminal deserving punishment?

And if pursuing then publishing classified materials is a federal offense, what kind of consequences should American journalists face for reporting classified information? Especially when the illicit information is intended not to warn the public of a legitimate threat posed by their government but for partisan political purposes—specifically, to advance the bogus Trump-Russia collusion hoax?

Assange has been charged in a federal district court in Virginia with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for allegedly working with former U.S. Army security analyst Chelsea Manning to access and post a massive trove of stolen classified documents.

“The primary purpose of the conspiracy was to facilitate Manning’s acquisition and transmission of classified information,” the indictment read. “Assange was knowingly receiving such classified records from Manning for the purpose of of publicly disclosing them on the WikiLeaks website.”

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/15/breathless-reports-hate-groups-aim-panic-americans-speech-controls/

A cluster of events this past week marked a steepening in the upwards trend toward online censorship.

In a New York Times and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report about online extremism, authors claimed the social media sphere enabled a “global network of white extremists” to develop and that this has led to a “surge of white supremacist and xenophobic terrorism in the West.” Although grasping in its conclusions and broadly flawed, the report was no doubt a clear enough justification for many to continue culling speech freedoms online.

In a near-identical report, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said certain social media platforms have become “round-the-clock digital white supremacist rallies.” They also conclude more policing from both industry and government must be done. Both reports coincided with social media executives being called to a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers demanded they do more to “stem white nationalist propaganda and hate speech online.”

The collective push to double down on a free-speech atmosphere already challenged post-Christchurch seems to beg the question: is it a surge in “hate” we’re witnessing, or a surge in “hate panic”?

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/15/feds-tell-every-american-exactly-theyre-money-every-year/

Congress should require that, within six months of Tax Day, the Internal Revenue Service must issue to all taxpayers a rundown of how much they paid, and what programs it went to fund.

Every April 15, Americans think about taxes. For something that grabs such a large part of our income, federal income taxes should be more prominent in our thoughts. Every day, every hour that you work, a piece of what you earn gets taken by the government before it even gets into your hands.

That is by design, and the withholding system not only guarantees the government the steady revenue it needs to function, but also makes sure that average taxpayers do not spend money that they will need to pay on tax day. The system is important—even necessary—to the functioning of a modern government, but it has one significant downside: people often do not realize how much they pay in taxes every year. That was shown to be especially true after the latest tax law changes: most people paid less in total taxes, but because their refunds may have decreased, they didn’t know it.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/15/candace-owens-has-shown-us-the-way/

How did this happen?

When did it become OK for one of the two major political parties in America to attack a young black woman, who works for an orthodox Jew, as a fascistic fan of Adolf Hitler after she was invited to testify before Congress?

When did it become OK for the representatives of the same party openly to label Israel, our closest friend in the Middle East, an “evil” state which has “hypnotized the West,” then libel their fellow representatives of having “dual loyalties” because they are Jewish, or to intimate that Israel simply shouldn’t exist?

And when did the all the leading names in that party’s list of candidates for president come to see it as obligatory to endorse a Green New Deal for the nation that has as its objective the outlawing of the internal combustion engine and air travel?

Anna Wintour, the longtime editor-in-chief of Vogue, magazine, explained why she will never have Melania Trump on the cover: “”You have to stand up for what you believe in, you have to take a point of view,” she told chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour. “Hmmm….

In 2011 with the assent of Ms.Wintour, Vogue magazine featured an adoring paean to Asma Assad the first lady of Syria – consort to Bashar al-Assad.

This is from that column since “disappeared” from the website.

Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert by Joan Juliet Buck

“Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. Her style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment. She’s a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement. Paris Match calls her “the element of light in a country full of shadow zones.” She is the first lady of Syria.

Syria is known as the safest country in the Middle East, possibly because, as the State Department’s Web site says, “the Syrian government conducts intense physical and electronic surveillance of both Syrian citizens and foreign visitors.” It’s a secular country where women earn as much as men and the Muslim veil is forbidden in universities, a place without bombings, unrest, or kidnappings, but its shadow zones are deep and dark. Asma’s husband, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president in 2000, after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, with a startling 97 percent of the vote.”

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/laffaire-assange/

Julian Assange’s arrest inside the embassy of Ecuador in London would not have been possible had that country’s government not authorized the British police to enter its theoretically sovereign territory. The lesson is clear: if you plan to seek asylum in a foreign embassy, you should be careful to choose the diplomatic premises of a country (a) not likely to be pressurized into betraying you; and (b) comfortable enough to make a long sojourn tolerable.

The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations reaffirmed the long-established principle of inviolability of diplomatic premises. The host-country’s police and security forces are not allowed access without a specific authorization of the chief of mission, which was granted in this case. Assange had spent almost seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy, after being welcomed there by the country’s former president Rafael Correa. The hosts’ political calculus has changed to his detriment over the past two years, however.

The British police arrested Assange supposedly for skipping UK bail seven years ago, but also—and far more importantly—under a previously secret U.S. indictment. The exact charge is for conspiracy, with Chelsea Manning, to hack into a “classified U.S. government computer.” Assange lawyer Barry Pollock said the allegations “boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity of that source.” Assange had predicted that this would happen years ago, and stated it as his reason for seeking asylum in the first place.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D, W.V.) gloated “He is our property!” when told of Assange’s arrest, and he accurately reflected the sentiment shared by the entire Beltway swamp, Democrats in particular:

Assange committed the unpardonable sins of embarrassing the establishment—from members of Congress to intelligence officials to the media. And he will now be punished for our sins. Despite having significant constitutional arguments to be made, it is likely that he will be stripped of those defenses and even barred from raising the overall context of his actions in federal court. What could be the most important free speech and free press case in our history could well be reduced to the scope and substance of an unauthorized computer access case.

Before becoming a fugitive Assange had unveiled a massive, likely unconstitutional NSA surveillance program potentially affecting all Americans. He later published emails that showed that the DNC and the Clinton campaign lied in various statements to the public, including the rigging of the primary for her nomination. As USA Today columnist Jonathan Turley says, “No one has argued that any of these emails were false. They were embarrassing. Of course, there is not crime of embarrassing the establishment but that is merely a technicality.” The American media machi

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14046/nation-of-islam-womens-march

Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, stands for almost everything the Women’s March principles claim to deplore. He is a misogynist who wants to keep women in their traditional roles, he hates all LGBT people in an exceptionally vicious way, he is a black separatist, unlike the marchers, who call for unity between races, and has shown close support for a number of dictators, notably the late Libyan president Mu’ammar Ghadhafi, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and Cuba’s Commadante Fidel Castro — even though the Women’s March progressives seek reform through democratic means achieved through working hand-in-hand as free people.

Given that most of the values are those on which most liberals and conservatives agree, one might ask how three of the four board members of the Women’s March came to embrace Louis Farrakhan, praise him, and even attend his 2018 Saviors’ Day rally. These three were Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Carmen Perez.

“Rank, vile, open, gutter-level anti-Semitism is apparently a pleasure that the progressive left is unwilling or unable to abstain from. Why?” — James Kirchick, Tablet, March 19, 2019.

It is well-known by some and wholly ignored by others that Islam has a long, sad history of antisemitism, a bigotry that originated in the seventh century CE (the first Islamic century) and has grown more vicious in the 21st. Combined with an almost universal anti-Zionism and bolstered by many on the political “left”, it is today the most ubiquitous and deadliest form of Jew-hatred. It takes the form, not just of insults, boycotts, and lawfare, but of wars, terrorist attacks, and calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and the genocide of the Jews.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/socialism-fails-every-time-11554851786

Self-described socialist Bernie Sanders has become a favorite of young voters by posing as an apostle of daring new ideas. Socialism, however, is anything but new. It’s hard to think of another idea that has been tried and failed as many times in as many ways or at a steeper price in human suffering.

The term “socialism” was coined by followers of Robert Owen (1771-1858), whom Karl Marx would label a “utopian socialist.” In 1825 Owen founded New Harmony, an Indiana commune, to demonstrate the superiority of what was first called the “social system.” The same year, Owen explained his experiment to a joint session of Congress attended by Supreme Court justices, President James Monroe and President-elect John Quincy Adams. Although Owen poured his fortune into it, New Harmony collapsed in disarray and recrimination within two years.

Owen’s son Robert Dale Owen salvaged the community by implementing what he called “a policy the very reverse” of socialism: “giving each respectable citizen every facility and encouragement to become (what every adult ought to be) a landed proprietor.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/elites-share-common-interests-changes-conventional-wisdom/

Conventional wisdom may change in a flash (remember ‘peak oil’?), but elites remain elites, united by common interests.
“All things are in flux.” — Heraclitus

The adage “nothing last forever” is an understatement. Far more accurate is something like “nothing lasts until next week.”

Saint-to-Sinner Silicon Valley

A decade ago, even most Republicans admired the rugged entrepreneurialism of the high-tech Masters of the Universe who had built a multitrillion-dollar, world-dominating Internet, and the computer, mobile-phone, online-sales, and social-media industries, defined by marquee companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo.

In turn, Democrats gave up their suspicions of big money, as they canonized liberal Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. Their wealth was okay, since the creators of it were progressives and dressed like Woodstock hipsters as they spread their billions freely among progressive think tanks, foundations, and political campaigns.