RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/7228/full

Thomas Cromwell ruined the Church in England and reinvented it as the Church of England. He thereby imposed his adopted Protestant faith on his countrymen, while destroying the Catholic faith of their fathers — and, incidentally, of his master Henry VIII. The King rejoiced until his dying day in the Papal title of defensor fideii, Defender of the Faith, and executed “Sacramentarians” (those who denied the Real Presence in the Eucharist) as heretics. Ironically, his minister Cromwell was one of them.

His Protestantism seems to have been of a more radical kind than that espoused by his ally and fellow architect of Anglicanism, Archbishop Cranmer. Whereas Cranmer equivocated, Cromwell deliberately demolished as much as possible of a millennium of Catholic Christianity in a decade of hyperactivity. He thereby enhanced the power and prestige of “this realm of England”, enabling Henry to crush popular uprisings, even the 40,000-strong Pilgrimage of Grace.

Such frightening efficiency has earned Thomas Cromwell many admirers in recent times, beginning half a century ago with the late Sir Geoffrey Elton, and culminating in the bestselling novels of Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, which were adapted for television with Mark Rylance as Cromwell. Now the distinguished Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch has become his latest champion, with Thomas Cromwell: A Life (Allen Lane, £30), which Mantel describes as “the biography we have been awaiting for 400 years”.

MacCulloch’s scholarship is impressive and he succeeds triumphantly in overcoming the main obstacle that has always inhibited Cromwell’s biographers: the destruction of all copies of the minister’s letters by his faithful amanuenses, once his loss of the King’s favour became clear. This resulted in the survival of only one side of his correspondence, what MacCulloch calls Cromwell’s “in tray”. The absence of a large corpus of his writing explains why he has seemed a shadowy figure. Yet that very impersonality has been a gift to Hilary Mantel and Mark Rylance, who are able to impose their own interpretations.

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/7227/full

As the title of her biography, still unsurpassed after four decades, Antonia Fraser chose the opening of Milton’s great panegyric of 1652: “Cromwell our chief of men”. The words of this sonnet resonate down the centuries because, with the exception of Winston Churchill, no man in English history has stood so far above his contemporaries as the Lord Protector.

He was, nevertheless, England’s only dictator. In classical political theory, a dictator was a leader appointed in time of war or other crisis for a limited period, the most famous example being Julius Caesar. Like Caesar, Cromwell was offered the crown; unlike Caesar, he was firm in his refusal. It speaks volumes for the loyalty he inspired, too, that he avoided the Roman’s fate — though after the Restoration his corpse was exhumed and hung on a gibbet, as part of Charles II’s posthumous revenge on the regicides. It says something, moreover, for the underlying awe in which Cromwell was still held, as well as for the English sense of fair play, that no such vindictiveness was shown towards Richard Cromwell, the Protector’s son, who briefly and unwillingly inherited his father’s office before being deposed by the army in favour of the Stuarts.

It would be an understatement to say that Oliver Cromwell has always divided opinion. In Ireland, the massacres at Drogheda and Wexford became a bloodstained folk memory that no historical contextualisation can cleanse. While Cromwell’s treatment of those he defeated was usually magnanimous by the standards of the time, he showed no mercy to the Irish rebels, especially the clergy. His attitude to Catholics in England, on the other hand, was exceptionally tolerant: he favoured freedom of conscience, at least in private, and the recusant community flourished under his protection. He even tried to persuade Rome to desist from placing Catholics under an obligation to rebel, in return for toleration; he was rebuffed.

But the proof of Oliver’s open mind — and in many ways the most enlightened achievement of his whole career — was his decision to reintroduce the Jews to England. Ever since Edward I’s shameful expulsion of 1290, England had been a no-go area for Jews, apart from a handful of individuals who worshipped in secret. By the mid-17th century the emerging Dutch republic, by contrast, was home to large and flourishing communities of Sephardic Jews, mostly Marranos who had sought refuge there from Spain and Portugal.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12732/progressives-reality

Many of these children in adult bodies were told, and actually believed, that better health care for everyone, including an unlimited number of illegal immigrants, would be attainable at a low cost, if only the government were to run it.

Many children in adult bodies also seem not to know that Socialism failed in the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, China, North Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba, and is now failing in Venezuela. The irrational wish is evidently stronger than rational arithmetic.

These victims of arrested emotional development seem to confuse good motives with good results. They want better health care for a greater number of people at a lesser cost; so they fantasize that they can achieve it without denying care to those who are too old, too sick or too expensive to receive it. They kind-heartedly want a “more equal distribution of wealth”; so they fantasize that they can maneuver it without penalizing and discouraging the productive members of society, while rewarding and encouraging the unproductive ones.

“Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child,” Cicero astutely observed. For many self-described progressives today, however, this seems not to be a drawback. On the contrary, like adolescents — insisting that they are grown-ups when their parents get in the way of their fun, but then running home for all their basic needs and creature comforts — such people seem to give no thought to the past and equally little to the future.

Many people like this are said to suffer from a “Peter Pan Syndrome”: the inability or unwillingness to grow up. In thought, they seem to lean to the political left. They want the government to take on the role of parent, even if that involves maxing out the country’s “credit cards,” so that even for a short time, they can live beyond what they earn.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

As we consider the news, it is worth a reminder that bias, arrogance and hypocrisy are natural adjuncts of the media. Too often, in recent times, they have become rent-seekers, compromising integrity for collusion with those they are supposed to cover. Politicians have many of the same attributes, but for them it is primarily about power. Control of the federal bureaucracy wields enormous influence and, as we have seen, can be self-sustaining across succeeding Administrations. In 2016, the Presidential elections was not about finding the angel hidden among heathens, but deciding which candidate was the least Beelzebub-like, in terms of character and values. But also, which espoused policies most like one’s own. No matter whether one is conservative or liberal, we should all be able to agree that freedom, progress and well-being hinge on economic growth. Elections determine which policies allow for the greatest growth that does the most good for the most people, in terms of providing opportunity, encouraging self-reliance and lifting people from poverty, while doing the least harm in terms of safety and the environment. Admittedly, that is a judgement call and people can and will disagree. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump was my choice in November 2016. Nothing I have heard or read since causes me to re-think that decision.

Apart from primaries in a number of states, the conviction of Paul Manafort and the guilty plea by Michael Cohen, real news, as is typical in August, was sparse – a lot of chaff but little wheat. (The midterm elections will begin in earnest after Labor Day.) Europe continues to struggle over Brexit, Greece, Poland, Turkey and illegal immigration, all of which manifest the coercive and undemocratic tendencies of Brussels-quartered bureaucrats. China continues to chase its Belt and Road Initiative, while bullying its neighbors. Terrorism and war in the Middle East are unending. The domestic economy is strong. The bull market in stocks persisted. A trade deal between the U.S. and Mexico was announced. Wildfires in California burned tens of thousands of acres, destroying hundreds of homes. The Angel of Death appeared and bore away some good people, including the heroic John McCain. And Mr. Trump remained a lightning rod – a willing one – for harried Democrats who struggle to find a coherent message, apart from disparaging Mr. Trump with hate-filled messages. It is ironic that the party that bears the name “democrat” refuses to accept the outcome of a democratic election almost two years ago. They claim Mr. Trump is a fascist, yet he has curtailed regulations, reduced taxes and dismantled a federal bureaucracy that had been built stronger by Mr. Obama. Abnegation of power is not the way of tyrants. As well, the Left accuses the President of obstructing free speech, while newspapers, TV, cable news shows, and social media are afire in opposition, and their comrades on college campuses shut out conservative speakers. While real news was light, the air was thick with irony and hypocrisy.

https://www.jewishlinknj.com/features/25956-what-did-they-know-when-did-they-know-how-did-they-interpret-the-information-2

Part II

Initial Reaction of American Jews to the Beginning of the War in Europe

American Jewish leaders were not surprised that the war would produce immense suffering for their European brethren. The initial reports deeply concerned them about the precarious position of the Jews in Eastern and Central Europe. Even before the war began, Hayim Greenberg, head of Poalei Zion and editor of the Labor Zionist Jewish Frontier, warned on June 15, 1939, that Jews “will be the first to suffer,” and that the conflict “might envelope the entire world.”

On September 13, 1939, Jacob Lestchinsky, the noted historian, sociologist and authority on Jewish demography and economic history, advised American Jews “to be prepared for events whose frightfulness will eclipse” the pogroms and massacres of the last war. “Human imagination,” he said, “is simply too limited to grasp the probable magnitude of the war’s toll or how much Jewish blood will be shed.” He feared the Jews of Ukraine, Galicia and Romania were in grave danger.

Writing in B’nai B’rith’s The National Call in October, 1939, Albert Viton, a journalist who reported from Palestine before joining the US Department of Agriculture in early 1940, observed that “everywhere Jews are the chief sufferers…and that there is no limit to their possible misery….” He believed that “a terribly large portion of Jews in Central, Eastern and Northern Europe will not survive the war; possibly as many as half of them will perish before the end.”

In the September-October 1939 issue of the Contemporary Jewish Record, published by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Committee expressed uncertainty as to what awaited the Jews in the future. “It is as yet too early today to comprehend the full extent of the tragedy which has overtaken the world… but [it] is sufficiently great to defy the imagination and stir the deep sympathy of those who still believe in mercy, justice and the protection of the weak.”

The November 1939 edition of The Call, the official organ of the English-speaking division of the Workman’s Circle, acknowledged that European Jewry would be greatly affected. “In the coming days, the areas of Jewish wretchedness will increase, the intensity of Jewish agony will reach a breaking point.”

https://www.jewishlinknj.com/features/25865-what-did-they-know-when-did-they-know-how-did-they-interpret-the-information

Part I

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum recently announced it is opening a new special exhibition, “Americans and the Holocaust,” in the spring of 2018 as a part of a museum-wide initiative exploring American responses to the Holocaust.

Among the questions the exhibit will attempt to answer are: What did American Jews know about the Holocaust, when did they know about the destruction and how did they respond?

If we are to learn from our past, we need to understand what American Jews knew about the plight of the Jews in Europe. When did the first reports appear in the Anglo-Jewish, American, Yiddish, and press about attacks against Jews? Did the accounts appear sporadically or often? How were they interpreted by American Jews? At any point did American Jews realize that the Nazi onslaught might be different than past massacres and persecution?

We begin our inquiry on September 1, 1939, when the war in Europe began. A wide range of national, regional and organizational papers and periodicals were reviewed. Another major source of information is derived from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin (JTA), a bureau established in 1914 to gather and distribute news about Jews. The New York Times is included in the survey since it is the newspaper of record in the U.S. The Times generally relegated the news concerning Jews to the inside or back pages of the paper. But this did not mean Jews did not see these articles. When reading a newspaper, Jews generally tend to look for items about the Jewish community no matter where they are positioned in the paper.

The Torah begins with descriptions of a world without form, the evolution of distinctions and differentiation – light/darkness, day/night, sea/dry land, and the origins of life – and with rules: what is permitted and what is forbidden.

The purpose of this narrative is not to teach us how, but why. It is meant not as a precise record of the world’s creation and the way it works, but as a guiding metaphor: Life has meaning because it has order, structure and rules that define purpose and link us to transcendence.

From a Torah perspective, the origins of the universe and life are not scientific questions, but moral obligations. It’s irrelevant whether the world is 5,776 years old or 50 million years old. What matters is how one lives – and the structure that the Torah provides is what shows us how to do so in a way that connects us to God.

This approach is apparent in God’s commandment to Noah to build an ark – not only what to build, but how to build it, the type of wood, dimensions, etc. Yet the size of the ark is not important; it is significant only as a God-inspired vessel – a metaphor for our own bodies and our lives. Noah was building a ship not only to save himself and his family, but to create a new civilization, one that would eventually produce Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, followed by the Jewish people, and influence mankind.

This idea of a God-ordered universe is intended to counter pagan ideas that nature and natural forces occur randomly. In the biblical pagan societies, there were no moral or ethical boundaries. In contrast, Judaism is based on the belief that everything and everyone has a divine purpose in the world. Regardless of difficulties and tragedies, one is obligated to fulfill that purpose.

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/269596/scott-shay-leap-of-faith

Scott Shay is a banker, not a rabbi or professor. He’s a founder and chairman of Signature Bank, a New York lender catering to local middle-market businesses and one of the financial success stories of the past decade. He dedicates a large part of his time to Jewish community work—the Chai Mitzvah movement, the local Jewish Federation, his Modern Orthodox synagogue Kehilath Jeshurun—and in 2006 published a well-received book about Jewish outreach and engagement through community initiatives.

A few years ago, Shay noticed that Jewish kids with a high degree of Jewish literacy, including day-school students, drew a blank on the central premise of Judaism, or any religion: that there is a God who wants something from us. He noted the cultural impact of the New Atheists, a small but influential group of writers—including evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and neuroscientist Sam Harris—who claim that gene science and brain biology demolish the notion of a personal God. He couldn’t find a book that took on the New Atheists, so he wrote it himself: In Good Faith: Questioning Atheism and Religion.

Shay wants his readers to think hard about the implications of belief or non-belief, and to take responsibility for the implications of what they believe. He writes in his new book: “The existence of God is a matter of belief in the plausible rationality of the biblical description of God and our contemporary personal experiences of God. So yes, today one must believe in God; no one can be certain that He does or does not exist.”

The New Atheists want to dethrone God—whom Dawkins mocked as “a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak”—but they worship something else in the place of God, Shay told me. “I think it’s a matter of belief either to acknowledge that there is a God, or to claim that there is no God,” he said. “I think both require a leap of faith.” For Dawkins and his atheist fellows, that means worshiping man, says Shay—but that’s also an expression of faith, with dire consequences.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/30/the-angry-

Sarah Jeong’s nasty tweets raise a personal question, not a political one: why is she so bitter when she has enjoyed so much success?

Her animus against white people sounds like a teen version of 1960s-era race radicals who demonized the white race as, in Susan Sontag’s infamous words, “the cancer of human history.” The ascent of this nonwhite, nonmale who doesn’t seem particularly astute or witty should produce the happy recognition that the long dominance of one identity group, white men, has diminished. Liberalism is winning—rejoice!

No gratitude from her, though, or from others, either. The Atlantic’s former correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates has made millions from his writings and speeches (his MacArthur award alone brought in $625,000), but that hasn’t blunted his anti-American rancor.

Women have earned more bachelor’s degrees and doctorates than men for many years, but feminists haven’t slowed their complaints about an enduring patriarchy.

When multiculturalists entered higher education in the 1970s and ’80s, they insisted that Western civilization move over and make room for “other” cultures and traditions. Now that Western Civ requirements have disappeared and “diversity” requirements have proliferated, though, we see more accusations of an alignment of Western civilization with white supremacy than we did 20 years ago (as with the response to President Trump’s magnificent speech in Warsaw).

Humanities professors, nearly all of them liberal or leftist, lead blessed lives in the bucolic enclaves of rich, selective schools, but I don’t know of any labor group that grumbles so much about the national condition (especially as measured by the election of President Trump).

A Comprehensive Mindset
Now, when people’s personal circumstances run squarely against their political judgments, something funny is going on in their heads. Way back in the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche saw it clearly and gave it a name: ressentiment.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271191/enough-victimhood-millionaire-athletes-and-their-sylvia-thompson

Reprinted from BarbWire.com.

I must admit I have never in my life purchased a ticket to a sports event. I am not a sports enthusiast. But I am an American black citizen, and I have had it up to the gills with black people who embrace victimhood. I also highly resent my being expected to do the same in order to affirm my “blackness.”

Black victims these days, for the most part, are the product of decades of Black Americans being used primarily by white progressive leftists to advance an anti-American agenda.

The current brouhaha surrounding the despicable behavior of NFL athletes toward the National Anthem and the American flag is a prime example of what the Left has done to my race.

One must assume these players and their guilt-conflicted white coaches and owners (and victimhood-inflicted black coaches) are being manipulated by the Left, because no intelligent, thinking people would deliberately cut themselves off at the knees. Essentially, what these young misguided mostly black men are doing is ensuring the demise of their lucrative paychecks. Further, I would wager that if these teams consisted of all white athletes, none of this idiocy would be allowed. We are witnessing this travesty because the vast majority of players are black and can whine “oppression” if appropriate action is taken against them for their unconscionable behavior.

The twisted reasoning that claims these protests are to highlight “injustice” and “police brutality” is a laughable crock. What they do in fact is dishonor valued symbols of this nation’s heritage and cover over truth about black crime.

Black males bear the brunt of police encounters because black males commit disproportionately more crimes. Police encounters with black men are so often confrontational because so many of these men, especially the young, don’t think “compliance” applies to them. They foolishly assume they are above the law and disrespect for police officers is an act of honor.