RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/the-folly-of-multiculturalism/

Exactly how beneficial to a society is multiculturalism, this word that is so celebrated in the West?

First one must first define the word: It is “the view that cultures, races, and ethnicities, particularly those of minority groups, deserve special acknowledgement of their differences within a dominant political culture.”

Note the immediate inaccuracies within this standard definition. “Races,” which indicate a people’s innate physical makeup, are conflated with “cultures” — which are neither innate nor physical, but learned and metaphysical.

This mix-up explains why for many in the West, the word “culture” often conjures at most physical, surface differences — “exotic” food or dress. In reality, cultures are nothing less than entire and distinct worldviews with their own unique sets of right and wrongs, often rooted in a religion or philosophy. Cultures bring much more than, say, the convenience of having Indian cuisine down the street.

As Anglo-French historian Hilaire Belloc once explained it:

Cultures spring from religions; ultimately the vital force which maintains any culture is its philosophy, its attitude toward the universe; the decay of a religion involves the decay of the culture corresponding to it — we see that most clearly in the breakdown of Christendom today.

Put differently, all values prized by the modern West — religious freedom, tolerance, humanism, gender equality, monogamy — did not develop in a vacuum but rather are inextricably rooted to Judeo-Christian principles which, over the course of some 2,000 years, have had a profound influence on Western epistemology, society and, of course, culture. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270478/how-talk-leftist-friend-about-tommy-robinson-danusha-v-goska

A cozy wood fire burns in an open-face brick oven. Soft piano music floats through a smooth jazz repertoire of American standards. Porsches and Maseratis cruise past the window. Two women approach, embrace, and kiss each other’s cheeks.

RACHEL: Wanda, it’s been too long. Great to see you. You have to tell me all about your new book.

WANDA: Great to see you, too! I love your new glasses. And I want to hear all about your youngest. She just bought a condo with her fiancée, no? It seems like just yesterday they were playing with dolls.

WAITRESS: Have a look at our menu.

WANDA: Thank you. Listen, Rachel, you know me. Always obsessed with current events. I want to ask you to sign a petition requesting that British Prime Minister Theresa May free Tommy Robinson from prison.

RACHEL: So, what looks good? I think I’m going to try the arugula and pistachio pesto pie. You?

WANDA: Oh, I’ll just get the usual. I see you have your laptop with you. I can find the Tommy Robinson petition and you can sign right now.

RACHEL: Aren’t you going to tell me about your book? And don’t you want to hear about the condo?

WANDA: Of course, of course. But I thought we’d get this signature out of the way so we could relax and talk about fun things.

RACHEL: Sigh. So, who is Tommy Robinson? (Rachel opens her laptop and Googles “Tommy Robinson.”)

WANDA: Tommy Robinson is a human rights activist and a citizen journalist. He’s now a political prisoner, imprisoned for exercising his free speech. He’s a champion of victimized women. You care about women’s rights. You care about free speech. I know you do. I know you’d want to sign this petition.

RACHEL: Wanda, are you serious? Look at this. Is this the Tommy Robinson you are talking about? Nazi? White supremacist? Far-right extremist? Wanda, what gives? Why are you supporting this man? This is not like you.

My father Mardoqueo Isaac Salomon was born in Poland in 1905. He was a physician who obtained his medical degree in Geneva, Switzerland where he met and befriended Zeev Vladimir Jabotinsky who persuaded him to leave Europe. When he graduated from medical school, he was denied visas to Palestine and America. Desperate to leave Europe he enlisted in the Bolivian Army which needed doctors for the Chaco War with Paraguay (1932-1935). My lovely and reluctant mother followed him. They lived in military tents in snake infested jungle where he went on patrols in a muddy river on boats encircled by piranhas. He rose in the ranks, was promoted to Surgeon General, changed his name from Mordechai to its Spanish equivalent Mardoqueo and after the Chaco War he settled into a peaceful life in Bolivia where we were saved from the horrors of Europe where all our relatives – grandparents, aunts, cousins- were herded into camps and killed.

At the age of forty, he obtained visas for our family and we came to America where we took buses throughout the United States in an effort to find a place to settle. We crisscrossed cities- Omaha, Chicago, New Orleans, El Paso, Las Cruces, New Mexico, Huntington, Alabama, and finally the Bronx where he passed his medical licensing exam and he opened a medical office and practiced until he had a stroke in 1979.

My brother and I reflect on Papi on Father’s day. He was loving, but pedantic, strict and demanding. But, most of all he was brave and adventurous and unique. rsk

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jordan-peterson-and-conservatisms-rebirth-1529101961

Jordan Peterson doesn’t seem to think of himself as a conservative. Yet there he is, standing in the space once inhabited by conservative thinkers such as G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr. and Irving Kristol. Addressing a public that seems incapable of discussing anything but freedom, Mr. Peterson presents himself unmistakably as a philosophical advocate of order. His bestselling book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,” makes sense of ideas like the “hierarchy of place, position and authority,” as well as people’s most basic attachments to “tribe, religion, hearth, home and country” and “the flag of the nation.” The startling success of his elevated arguments for the importance of order has made him the most significant conservative thinker to appear in the English-speaking world in a generation.

Mr. Peterson, 56, is a University of Toronto professor and a clinical psychologist. Over the past two years he has rocketed to fame, especially online and in contentious TV interviews. To his detractors, he might as well be Donald Trump. He has been criticized for the supposed banality of his theories, for his rambling and provocative rhetoric, and for his association with online self-help products. He has suffered, too, the familiar accusations of sexism and racism.

From what I have seen, these charges are baseless. But even if Mr. Peterson is imperfect, that shouldn’t distract from the important argument he has advanced—or from its implications for a possible revival in conservative thought. The place to begin, as his publishing house will no doubt be pleased to hear, is with “12 Rules for Life,” which is a worthy and worthwhile introduction to his philosophy.

What I call “splash” news- a blackout of virtually everything else- while pundits parse, praise, and pan high level meetings, is on full display with the recent Kim/Trump summit.

A note of caution; I like Donald Trump and wish him well, but I can’t stop thinking about past “historic meetings”and how they ended.

Nixon/Kissinger went to China in 1972 to meet with Mao Tse Tung , a, ruthless tyrant and mass murderer and enslaver of millions. In resolving to restore relations with China, they abandoned Taiwan a most reliable ally. Now there was a success. Remember Tiananmen Square in 1989? After several weeks of demonstrations, Chinese troops entered Tiananmen Square on June 4 and fired on civilians. Estimates of the death toll range from several hundred to thousands.

Then in 1978 there was the “historic” Camp David Accord signed after Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem to bark orders at the Knesset demanding full return of the Sinai Penisula (92% of all land captured in 1967 and retained in 1973 after Egypt lost both wars against Israel). He further demanded a got concessions from Menachem Begin, including promises of “autonomy” for the Arab residents of the West Bank. We see what the promise of”autonomy” has led to. And for the record, the “normal relations” that were established did not halt the sermons and schoolbooks calling for Israel’s destruction.

And then there was the “historic” Oslo accord of September 1993, with handshakes all around among Clinton, Rabin and mass murderer and arch terrorist Yasser Arafat on the lawn of the White House. The media cooed and swooned and seasoned statesmen predicted peace at last in the Middle East. The Israelis gave up shrines and towns to Arab control and the Arabs swiftly destroyed them and resumed terror against civilians in markets, buses, beaches, weddings and restaurants, leaving mangled strollers and dead babies still in their cribs.

So I curb my enthusiasm….rsk

Gaza was surrendered to the Arabs in 2005. The lush and productive farms which provided produce to millions of people,, state of the art irrigation technology, and modern and updated gardening tools and equipment were purchased for the local Arabs by two Jewish American philanthropists. In response to “independence” all farms, homes and equipment were trashed and rendered useless as soon as the Israelis vacated. Furthermore, rockets were launched into Israeli population centers. And Gaza was taken over by terrorists who drove the population into chaos, shortages and dismal conditions.

As Andrew Bostom reminds me it was ever thus. For 12 centuries since its Muslim conquest conditions have been brutal. In “Land of Dust”-Palestine at the Turn of a Century” by the late Middle East Scholar Saul S.Friedman, the author describes Gaza:

“Gaza itself, the city of Samson’s torment, proved to be a place of straggling and mean appearance, where 35,000 residents lived in the meanest and most sordid way……The people lived in squalid hovels….their veiled women drew water from brackish wells. And many of the adult males supported themselves by theft or smuggling to the bazaars of Jerusalem.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/the_end_of_merit.html

Everywhere we look, the principle of merit is compromised or regarded as the worst form of unfairness. Sanctioned mediocrity is now the order of the day. Standards of achievement are diluted, hard work goes unacknowledged, and the desire to excel in one’s field or to accept responsibility for one’s actions and even for one’s failures is in abeyance. Individual talent, intelligence, entrepreneurial success, and personal discipline are dismissed as unjust advantages deriving from the exploitation of the dispossessed. “You didn’t build that,” as Obama notoriously proclaimed. The inevitable result is the devitalizing of political, intellectual, and professional life to the point where a society finds itself in a state of “progressive” deterioration.

Examples abound.

The American (and Canadian) university system is in precipitous freefall, filled with students largely incapable of scholarly ability and civil decorum, professors who do not or cannot teach, gender studies mavens who pollute the curriculum with feminist groupthink, administrators infected by political correctness who propagate “hate speech” laws and shut down controversial debate, and so-called “diversity officers” inimical to diversity of ideas. In effect, the university has opened its doors, in the name of affirmative action, student empowerment, and equity hiring, to a cohort of self-righteous incompetents and mischief-makers. The consequence is predictable. The weak and the undeserving profit at the expense of the shrinking cadre of the committed and the qualified, and society is the worse for it.

Journalism, once a respected profession, has lost its reason for existence, having scrapped its mandate to report on events and to act as public watchdog. Instead, it devotes itself to dishing up propaganda, fake news, and outright lies. Media outlets hire not journalists in the established sense, but journolists, partisan peons poorly trained in linguistic proficiency and utterly devoid of ethical standards. Those who depend on the media for information are thus systematically deceived, leading to a further coarsening of public cognition.

Similarly, our various welfare organizations and government departments, originally conceived as a social safety net, have violated their founding impetus and have come instead to celebrate failure and ineptitude. The ambulance network in drug-infested Vancouver, for example, is too busy responding to its constituency of addicts to provide prompt service to tax-paying citizens. Municipal authorities are dedicated to saving those mired in the throes of self-abuse while ignoring the rightful claimants to paid for social services.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/06/no-donald-trump-hasnt-especially-bad-rule-law/

If your contention is that Donald Trump has the propensity to sound like a bully and an authoritarian, I’m with you. If you’re arguing that Trump’s rhetoric is sometimes coarse and un-presidential, I can’t disagree. I’m often turned off by the aesthetic and tonal quality of his presidency. And yes, Trump has an unhealthy tendency to push theories that exaggerate and embellish small truths to galvanize his fans for political gain. Those are all legitimate political concerns.

Yet the ubiquitous claim that Trump acts in a way that uniquely undermines “the rule of law” is, to this point, simply untrue.

At National Review, Victor Davis Hanson has it right when he argues that “elites” often seem more concerned about the “mellifluous” tone of leaders rather than their abuse of power. “Obama defies the Constitution but sounds ‘presidential,’” he writes, “Trump follows it but sounds like a loudmouth from Queens.”

But while Obama’s agreeable tone had plenty to do with his lack of media scrutiny, many largely justified, and even cheered, his abuses because they furthered progressive causes. But not only did liberals often ignore “the rule of law” when it was ideologically convenient, they now want the president to play by a set of rules that doesn’t even exist.

Partisans always tend to conflate their own policy preferences with “rule of law” — or “democracy” or “patriotism.” Even taking that tendency into consideration, the pervasive claim that Trump undermines law typically amounts to little more than questions of how he comports himself. Rarely, if ever, does it have anything to do with the Constitution.

The Normandy Invasion, also called Operation Overlord, was launched on June 6, 1944 with the simultaneous landing of American,British, and Canadian forces on five separate beachheads in Normandy,France. By the end of August 1944 all of northern France was liberated, and the invading forces reorganized for the drive into Germany where they would eventually meet with Soviet forces advancing from the east to bring an end to the Nazi killing machine and an end to the Holocaust.

Two brothers Henry King, age 21 and George King 24 were killed on the beaches only a few days apart. In President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s letter to my husband’s grieving family, he stated:

“…..Freedom lives and through it he lives in a way that humbles the undertakings of most men….”

Freedom, alas, did not live for the millions upon millions who were enslaved and murdered by the communist tyrannies of the Soviet Union and China when World War 2 was over. Read ” Reflections on a Ravaged Century” by the late and incomparable historian Robert Conquest.

The near miraculous rescue of Dunkirk was completed on June 4th, 1940. The last of the British soldiers left on June 3 under heavy fire and strafing and bombing by the Nazis. Churchill ordered the Royal Navy to return on 4 June to the French rearguard.
Altogether, about 338,000 men were rescued in the Dunkirk evacuation, including 123,000 French soldiers – 26,000 French on that final day.

“We must be very careful,not to assign this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations…..We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air…..We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”