RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.atimes.com/article/a-funeral-for-a-world-that-never-was/
Senator John McCain’s grand funeral was also a chance for the Establishment to take one step closer to its grave.

Funeral services are not for the benefit of the defunct, who is beyond our praise or condemnation, but for the living, who know before long that they will follow the honored dead into a cold grave.

Senator John McCain’s funeral was the most ostentatious that Washington has accorded except for a president, and much grander than the 2006 funeral of Gerald Ford, for example. The American Establishment took the opportunity to mourn a world that it imagined but never inhabited.

The eulogies for the Arizona senator, to be sure, were a convenient occasion for the Establishment to show its dudgeon at “the pointedly un-invited President Trump,” as the New Yorker noted, calling the event “the biggest resistance meeting yet.”

McCain’s daughter Meghan contrasted what she called her father’s “real greatness” with the “cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice,” a reference to Trump. Politics, though, were less important than the American elite’s collective exercise in self-consolation after the catastrophic failure of its policies and its repudiation by the voters in the 2016 election.

Senator McCain served his country and suffered on its behalf as a prisoner of war, and deserves respect on the occasion of his passing. But the unctuous sea of self-congratulatory declarations of virtue embedded in his obsequies were enough to make the portraits in the Capitol rotunda puke.

Here, for example, is the Chicago Tribune: “Ringing through Washington National Cathedral on a dreary morning were paeans to bipartisanship, compromise and civility of the sort that seem to be under daily assault from all corners of the country, especially from the White House … A common decency. A shared identity and values that transcend ideology, class or race. A toughness that shows itself in battle and service to nation rather than on Twitter. Each of these was touted as a key element of McCain’s epic life.”

The surrender of Imperial Japan was announced on August 15 and formally signed on September 2, 1945, bringing the hostilities of World War II to a close.
And then it was really over…..
It would be the last time that Americans fought and died in a war that ended with total defeat and surrender of enemies…..rsk

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271188/mainline-protestant-churches-mantra-palestinian-joseph-puder

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported (August 21, 2018) that during a speech in July, 2018, the Episcopal Church Bishop Suffragen Gayle Harris claimed that “she had witnessed Israeli security forces arrest a 3-year-old on Temple Mount and shoot a 15-year-old in the back 10 times after making a comment to a group of soldiers.” Harris is the second-highest ranking Episcopal official in Massachusetts. As it turned out, these were bogus and unfounded allegations. Harris later apologized, saying they were second-hand stories. She said, “I had heard and unintentionally framed them as though I had personally witnessed the alleged events.” It has become symptomatic of left-leaning mainline Protestant church people to believe such stories tinged with anti-Semitic overtones, which are disseminated by Palestinian-Arab propagandists.

Earlier, the Episcopal News Service headlined its April 12, 2018 issue with, “The Episcopal Church Joins Call for End to Gaza Violence and Measures to Protect Palestinians.” The transparent anti-Israel bias of the statement by the 15 mainline Protestant churches was reflected in the comments made by reader Charles Banks who stated: “The suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza is agonizing to all of us, but what about the suffering of the Israelis, who are the victims of random, murderous Palestinians (especially Hamas) aggressions?”

Mainline Protestant churches have habitually used the phrase “Palestinian rights” in their condemnation of Israel. Few of those voices elaborated on what those rights were, and where those rights apply. Everyone, including most Israelis, agree that Palestinians should have human and civil rights, religious freedom, and the right to live in peace and security. Those same rights however, are ignored by critics of Israel in the mainline Protestant churches when it comes to Jewish-Israeli rights to live in peace and security.

First, let us point out that Israel is a democracy where civil and human rights are respected and religious freedom is extended to all its citizens – Muslim, Christian, Arab or Jew. This is not the case with the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas based in Ramallah, and certainly not in the case of Hamas in Gaza. In the latter, Christians have been persecuted and killed by Islamist fanatics, and as for Jews, the area is “Judenrein.” Palestinian-Arabs have no rights in Israel since they are not citizens of the state. However, Israeli-Arabs do have such rights, and they are exercising them.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/is_it_over_yet.html

There’s a huge difference between the solemn, sorrowful citizens who lined the streets to say good-bye to Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, and FDR and the rubberneckers hoping to catch a glimpse of celebrity politicians putting in a public appearance for the late Senator McCain’s multiple memorials. Releasing those men we loved from afar to a higher and happier place bears no resemblance to spectators taking part in one of the “scheduled events” posted strategically on the Fox News website and elsewhere.

Despite of the wall-to-wall media coverage of a seemingly unending series of funeral services (five at last count), this nation does not mourn the passing of a hero. Yes, dignitaries showed up and slid fake praise into orations meant for something other than a heartfelt memorial to the dearly departed. John McCain may have been dear to a few people, but for the rest of us (and most likely 99% of the people invited to be part of his ostentatious Display of the Dead), he remains a clear and present exemplar of a petty plutocracy and blatant self-service. One ecstatic writer called it the “biggest resistance meeting yet” as Her Father’s Daughter saddled the next generation with the bitter Sins of the Father and was celebrated for embracing what many have called a world-class grudge. Somehow, she missed the message that “John called on us to be bigger… and better than that.” Others, disgusted by the “political theatrics and cheap shots” recognized her father’s signature spitefulness — nasty to the end and beyond. Yet it was the observation of a high-school junior that explained a certain hollowness to every news anchor’s claim that a nation mourns. CJ Pearson wrote: “At most funerals I’ve attended, it’s God’s love that fills the room, not hate and animus for a person who is not even in attendance.”

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.