RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/

President Donald Trump has finally sacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The only upside to this development is that it ends the grotesque public humiliation of a man of honor and courage. Trump persuaded himself that Sessions was fungible, in order to justify scapegoating him for the special counsel investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign. Trump was wrong about Sessions’s disposability, and wrong to blame him for the appointment of a special counsel, which was triggered by Trump’s own impetuous firing of FBI director James Comey. Now that same willfulness threatens the Trump agenda and, possibly, the integrity of the justice system itself.

Trump won the presidency by promising to restore the rule of immigration law after decades of bipartisan neglect. Sessions, serving as a senator from Alabama in 2016, was uniquely positioned to do so. No politician had devoted as much time to documenting the corrosive effects of low-skilled mass immigration on the country’s working class. Sessions was a nationalist long before Trump came on the scene. He knew the myriad tactics through which the nation’s career bureaucrats and immigration advocates had abetted mass illegal entry, and set out to block them. As attorney general, he used every lawful tool available to his office to fight the sanctuary-city movement, whereby local jurisdictions openly defy the federal government’s efforts to protect the public from illegal-alien criminals. Scofflaw cities and states across the country responded with a spate of lawsuits against Sessions; left-wing judges slapped the Justice Department with questionable nationwide injunctions to protect the sanctuary jurisdictions. Sessions sued right back. Sheriffs, the closest to the ground when it comes to public sentiment about law enforcement, understood what was at stake. “Jeff Sessions has probably been the most effective attorney general in the eyes of law enforcement in our nation’s history,” National Sheriffs’ Association executive director Jonathan Thompson told the Huffington Post in August 2018.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/11/famously-qualified-victory/

“In the aftermath of the downfall of the Soviet empire, it was said that the last refuge of Marxism were the universities’ sociology departments. The leftist messianic impulse soon revived and cultural Marxism has become entrenched in universities in the US, here and elsewhere. White middle class millennials have been infected. In the United States and elsewhere, we have an increased voting bloc of the supposedly educated who are oblivious to history and yet to be mugged by reality.”

Trump hailed the midterm results as a triumph, which perhaps better reflects his tendency to exaggerate than the fact of the matter. Yes, the GOP picked up Senate seats, but the loss of women and suburban voters, combined with the Democrats’ swing to the hard left, does not auger well.

After my misplaced forecast of a Romney win in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, I have studiously avoided political prognostications. However a couple of reflections seem appropriate in the aftermath of the 2018 mid- terms.

Greg Sheridan, along with a number of others, has credited President Donald Trump with a political victory. On the raw figures, compared with Bill Clinton in 1994, and Barack Obama in 2010 and 2014, the President’s party only suffered moderate losses in the House of Representatives, and made almost unprecedented gains in the Senate. Indeed, over the longer term, the swing against the Republicans in 2018 was below average.

Yet a note of caution is warranted. The Democrats of yesterday were not, as they are today, the party of an extreme left wing “resistance”. We may accuse Trump of verbal excesses and vulgarity, but much of the Democrat leadership seemed only too happy to foment harassment of their Republican opponents, and reluctant to condemn the violence of Antifa and other extremists groups and individuals who serve as the Left’s skirmishers and auxiliaries.

If the Democrats had emphasised civility and adhered to a centrist position, they would likely have made far more significant gains in the House, possibly even gained a majority in the Senate. Yes, on the raw figures, Trump did relatively well. But in terms of political cultur, we should be concerned that a very leftist Democrat Party was still able to capture a majority in the House.

Maybe it was not a “wave” but a loss is a loss. It was still a good night for Republicans in the states-Senate and Governors. It was also a blow to Obama whose active campaigning made zero difference- a referendum on his dismal administration.

Now, call me a cockeyed optimist, but remember that all the scoundrels (and so many are real scoundrels ) elected to the House have 23 months to hold on to their seats before they are challenged. The ousting of all the incumbents who voted against Justice Kavanaugh is instructive. Bad behavior reaps opprobrium.

Stay tuned and stay positive and stay focused….rsk

A time, however, came in the progress of human affairs, when men ceased to think it a necessity of nature that their governors should be an independent power, opposed in interest to themselves. It appeared to them much better that the various magistrates of the State should be their tenants or delegates, revocable at their pleasure. In that way alone, it seemed, could they have complete security that the powers of government would never be abused to their disadvantage. By degrees, this new demand for elective and temporary rulers became the prominent object of the exertions of the popular party, wherever any such party existed; and superseded, to a considerable extent, the previous efforts to limit the power of rulers.

I am a capitalist. I believe in capitalism because it is foundational to upward mobility, the middle class, ordered liberty, and the individual freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution. So, what is the problem with capitalism?

Capitalism is driven factually by supply and demand but artificially by the marketing and advertising industries that hawk its products. So, if a particular business or industry is suffering from lack of sales – it can hire a marketing firm to create an artificial demand for its products. Those products may or may not be beneficial to the public. For decades tobacco was marketed and advertised as elegant, sophisticated, and desirable even though it was a known cancer-causing killer. Buyer beware is the operating principle in a market economy.

Billions of dollars are spent annually marketing, lobbying, and advertising products because marketing, lobbying, and advertising are extremely effective.

Products are ordinarily considered to be goods and services, but what if the product is ideology?

The publishing of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago (1973) destroyed any Western fantasies about collectivist ideology and life under communism/socialism when individual liberties are surrendered to the state. Socialism needed a new image if it was going to sell. How was the Left going to market collectivism?

In Matthew Continetti’s brilliant lecture titled “The Problem of Identity Politics and Its Solution” given on October 24, 2017 at Hillsdale College he explores the challenge for the Left.

“How to carry on the fight against capitalism when its major ideological alternative was no longer viable? The Left found its answer in an identity politics that grew out of anti-colonialism. Marx’s class struggle was reformulated into an ethno-racial struggle – a ceaseless competition between colonizer and colonized, victimizer and victim, oppressor and oppressed. Instead of presenting collectivism and central planning as the gateway to the realization of genuine freedom, the new multiculturalist Left turned to unmasking the supposed power relations that subordinated minorities and exploited third world nations.”

The Left had a new marketing, lobbying, and advertising strategy that targeted American universities and then K-12. American education was chosen as the vulnerable soft target for revolution – no bullets required. The long-term strategy was that two generations of leftist educational indoctrination would transform America from a capitalist constitutional republic into the socialist state required for internationalized one world government. It was a two-fisted approach that softened the targets (future voters) in school to accept the seismic political shifts that would come. This is how it works.

I keep humming a song…..rsk

“To the right, ever to the right

Never to the left, forever to the right

We have gold, a market that will hold

Tradition that is old, a reluctance to be bold.”—

“Cool, Cool, Considerate Men,” from 1776, book by Peter Stone, music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards (1969)

It had been included in the original Broadway show, but didn’t make it into the finished film.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/04/the-stages

Having explored the historical genesis of liberal derangement, especially in the wake of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, and having disclosed the role to be played by Denial after the probable failure of Democrats’ “blue wave” in 2018, we now proceed to the next stage of our analysis. We turn our attention to the forms of liberal Anger that are likely after November 6th.

Part three of a four-part series.

Anger is, as previously discussed, the dominant emotion discernible in the Left’s reaction to Trumpism. In fact, rage is rampant among liberals. What has kept this anger in check, however, is a sense of assurance that the Trump phenomenon is something akin to a death spasm among conservatives. Leftists have long assumed that “progress” of the sort they desire is inevitable, and indeed they can point to many victories won in the last few decades. Moreover, soaked as they are in identity politics, the Left puts great stock in America’s changing demographics. They presume—understandably, given their inveterate anti-white racism—that the “browning” of America can only foretell doom for Republicans.

They ignore the obvious counterargument: this country has been “browning” for a long time, and the Republican Party is today stronger than it has ever been since the 1920s. In any case, it cannot be overstated how integral it is to the peace of mind of liberals to assume that the Republican Party will soon die an ignoble death, and therefore, they believe, any upsurge in nationalism or conservatism is a temporary aberration. The march of history towards the broad, sunlit uplands of progressivism will soon resume.

The failure of the “blue wave” would be a punch in the gut to this attitude of complacency and self-satisfaction on the Left. The American people will have chosen Trumpism and Republicans not once, but twice. As leftists see it, this will mean an affirmation of “hate” and a rejection of their own worldview of “inevitable” progress. The liberal throng (sometimes understandably mistaken for a mob) will have expended vast energies, and donated vast sums, to achieve a victory that remains elusive if not utterly improbable. The bile will rise in leftist throats as it begins to dawn on them that the last gasp of conservatism, which they perceived President Trump to hail, may instead be an enduring realignment of American politics that is favorable to Republicans. They will despair at the fact that millions of women and minorities, who by rights belong on the Democratic plantation, deserted the cause. They will, in short, experience anger on a scale that will make 2016-18 seem like child’s play.

There are many good columns and editorials on the serious consequences of the upcoming election by excellent journalists and commentators. Now here it is in a nutshell from the President of our nation Donald Trump.

“This election is a choice between Republican results and radical resistance.
It’s a choice between greatness and gridlock.
It’s a choice between jobs and mobs.
And it’s a choice between an economy that is going strong
and the Democrats who are going crazy.”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/02/

Hey girlfriend, what’s up? Love the new Moncler vest… aubergine is the hot color this fall. How’s Olivia doing with those college applications? And good luck on Jacob’s big lacrosse tourney this weekend!

Listen, we need to talk. I know you’re not really into politics. Even though a lot of us voted for Donald Trump in 2016, you did not: Since Election Day, you’ve bragged about how edgy it was to vote for Evan McMullin. But you also thought it was edgy when you got your hair cut like Kate Gosselin in 2006.

We all make mistakes.

So there’s a super important election on Tuesday and the media is convinced that we suburban moms will vote Democrats back into power. And looking at some of the polls, I’m afraid they might be right. Democrats only need to flip 23 Republican House seats, and lots of them are located in the suburbs. Just 23 more seats until we get Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Again.

Now, maybe that doesn’t scare you. Maybe you think it will be totally trendy to run those Trump-loving Republicans out of office and show them who’s boss. Maybe Alyssa and Oprah and the gals on “The View” have convinced you that voting for a Democrat is the only way to keep your Cool Chick Card.

But hear me out. I know you hate taking advice from someone who doesn’t buy soy milk and organic bison meat, but if you would have listened to me about the Rumchata shots at the club’s summer party, you wouldn’t have jumped into the water hazard on the 18th hole.

Caution, my friend.

Because despite what Democrats are telling you now, just remember one thing: They hate you.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Ignorance about government and its Constitution threatens our nation. The Founders felt the provision of a virtue-inspired public education that includes civics imperative to the survival of the Republic they had created. Noah Webster was direct about the need for a moral sense: “The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities.” In the 1950s,” as Paul Volcker mentioned recently to Gillian Tett of the Financial Times, “courses in public administration commanded high status at universities such as Princeton. But now the phrase ‘good government’ is a mockery.” Civics is no longer universally taught. A March 2017 article in “neaToday”reported that only 25% of students reach the “proficient” standard on the NAEP Civics Assessment. An article in the November 8, 2016 issue of The Atlanticnoted that 30% of Americans did not know in what century the American Revolution took place. Forty percent thought the Bill of Rights guaranteed the right to vote; 40% did not know that the Constitution gives the right to declare war to Congress; 50% did not know the terms for U.S. Senators and Representatives, and 80% did not know the origin of Lincoln’s unforgettable words: “…a government of the people, by the people, for the people…” What does this portend for our country? The direction the country is moving is not healthy for democracy. We need to calm rhetoric and emphasize the civic virtues critical to a free people.

As we approach the 100thanniversary of the Armistice that ended World War, two books, with lessons for today, are worth noting:George Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England, written in 1935. The book covers three crucial events in England – Irish Home Rule, Suffrage and unionization – during the four years preceding the Great War and how attitudes and responses threatened a nation that had been the cradle of liberalism. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914by Christopher Clark covers the two or three decades leading up to the same war. The book was written in 2012 and explores the complex relationships, treaties and alliances that led well-meaning leaders into a conflict during which idealism was destroyed and sixty-million people died. Bad things happen when complacency and ignorance flourish. It is a desire for power that has caused arrogant elitists in the U.S. and Europe, who speak the language of globalism but who act with imperium. The teaching of civics, including the virtues expressed by our Founders would help restore moral principles and maintain freedoms of expression.

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