RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Congress shall make no law” restricting the free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, or of association. Aside from Christ’s distinction between duties to God and duties to Caesar, the First Amendment’s words are some of the greatest barriers ever erected against tyranny. But James Madison, who wrote them, warned how easily the ever-present temptation to tyrannize overcomes “parchment barriers.”

Until recently, the First Amendment was our Constitution’s least questioned, most treasured part. Today, growing calls for joining the rest of the world in criminalizing speech offensive to society’s most powerful groups remain anathema to most Americans. As the federal government applied the Bill of Rights to the states, the First Amendment was the first that it imposed upon them, in a 1925 Supreme Court decision called Gitlow v. New York. No one exercising government power at any level, no “state actor” may deprive anyone of his First Amendment rights. That’s how it works in theory, anyhow.

Nevertheless, most Americans sense that freedom to engage publicly in religious activity, to express ourselves, to choose with whom to associate (or not), is declining perhaps irreversibly. States, for example, have created “human rights commissions” that penalize businesses for refusing to take part in celebrating homosexuality. Public school employees are fired for praying on school grounds, and even children are punished for doing so. All know that certain opinions or attitudes, even casual remarks, deemed “offensive” by powerful persons preclude, derail, or end careers.

This re-prioritization naturally led to a re-defining of the First Amendment’s objective as ridding America of “discrimination” by private individuals. No one should be surprised that this change of focus, which initially led the courts to disallow laws permitting discrimination by private individuals against what came to be known as “protected classes,” ended in Justice Kennedy, writing for the Supreme Court’s majority, damning and well-nigh criminalizing the very motivations of such discrimination. How easily did “Congress shall make no law” become “Congress really must make a law…” !

Muslims individually should, without qualification, be treated as respectfully and kindly as everyone else. However, at another level, it is surely reasonable to ask whether Muslims collectively should be absolved of accountability for the bitter fruits of Islam?

I’ll begin with a provocative question. Steel yourselves. Can those expressing affinity with Mein Kampf and National Socialism be, nevertheless, moderate and peaceful Nazis? I’ll leave the question hanging. And won’t directly come back to it.

Donald Trump got himself into one of those messes of his own making back in August. Having had his scripted response to the events in Charlottesville well received, he couldn’t later resist extemporising by blaming the violence on both sides. Moreover, he made the claim that among the thugs there were fine people on both sides, who had simply come to express their views peacefully on whether a statue of Robert E. Lee should be removed or left in place

Commentators piled on. They need little opportunity where Trump is concerned. Fine people, it was pointed out, do not associate themselves with the Ku Klux Klan, with white supremacists, and with Nazis marching under torches, some chanting “blood and soil”. Fine people, it was said, would have left when they saw the character of many of those marching. They would not have wanted to associate themselves with Nazis and their evil creed.

As relentlessly nit-picking as they are, this time Trump’s critics had a point. Would people of moderate and peaceful disposition march with Nazis? I think not. While freedom of association is important, the company you keep matters; and, most particularly, if you share similar aims. Suppose that those “fine” marchers that Trump referred to, based on his own observations, were, in fact, sympathetic to the KKK. Their apparent peacefulness wouldn’t be enough to let them off the hook.

This brings me to Islam and more pointedly to its followers.

At one level it is essential to distinguish Islam from its followers. In the normal course of every­day life, Muslims individually should, without qualification, be treated as respectfully and kindly as everyone else. However, at another level, it is surely reasonable to ask whether Muslims collectively should be absolved of accountability for the bitter fruits of Islam that are everywhere evident. For it is clear that they have been absolved by the mainstream media, by Christian church leaders, by most of the political class, and even by conservative commentators who are otherwise indelicate enough to use the word Islamic when describing terrorist attacks. You simply don’t get such attacks without the assertion, at some early point, that the vast majority of Muslims are moderate and peaceful and reject violence. Sometimes a figure of 99 per cent plus is used to hammer home the storyline.

Where does this habitual response come from? I suggest it starts with the tendency of human beings to put things having different characteristics into separate boxes or categories. In this case, Islam and Muslims have been put into two non-intersecting categories.

Take Islam first.

An evil alter ego has emerged as a category separate from Islam proper. It’s called Islamism. Islamism is sometimes referred to as “political Islam”. This is the favoured description of Dr Zuhdi Jasser. Dr Jasser is a leading light among those who want to see Islam “reformed”. He’s a medical doctor and former officer in the US Navy.

Near the end of 2015, Jasser, along with another twelve “renegade” Muslims—six of the thirteen are based in America, five in Canada, one in the UK and one in Denmark—signed and publicised a two-page Muslim Reform Movement Declaration. With Martin Luther and Wittenberg in mind, they pinned a copy on the doors of the Islamic Center in Washington DC. I can only guess at the fate of these two pieces of paper, but I can say that unlike Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses Jasser’s Declaration has not spread like wildfire.

In days of old, knights used shields to deflect arrows and spears. Today, planes dispense chaff or utilize sky shields to deflect in-coming missiles. But, in the world of politics, words are the means by which the tide of battle is turned – attention deflected away from deeds to malapropisms. This is especially true when the enemy is President Trump. Peggy Noonan recently wrote on the subject: “Deflection as a media strategy has become an art form.” The self-righteous (and self-serving) statement/question by April Ryan – cited in the rubric above – is an example.

Ms. Ryan’s question was rhetorical. It was used to make a point, knowing it would be the story. She may even have expected Mr. Trump to respond; for she, like most of her fellow travelers, see him as vulgar, arrogant, sexist, racist, xenophobic, and stupid. His character, faulty at best, is denigrated further, because his politics are disliked. It is easier to impugn character than to challenge policies, especially those that have helped those the Left claims to support: Black unemployment, the lowest in over forty years, and women’s unemployment, the lowest since October 2000.

Parents, teachers (and the Clintons) would have us do as they say, not as they do. But Carl Jung suggested we are what we do. Jesus, as quoted in Corinthians, said: “Do as I do…” Mr. Trump’s syntax and Tweets can be grating and inimical, but his deeds have been positive. Regulation has been reduced, taxes have been lowered, and the economy is experiencing its fastest growth in a decade. Obama’s “nanny state” is being dismantled. Russia and China, contrary to expectations, have been put on notice. Israel is again our friend. NATO is stronger, as more countries have increased contributions close to the requested 2% of GDP. Relations with Japan and Taiwan have improved, and 98% of the land held by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been recovered. The Mullahs of Iran are being called out for what they are – unrepentant dictators – as is Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Brussels is not seen as the capital of a self-proclaimed moral, unified Europe, but as an impediment to national and individual freedom. And, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has stood up for real human rights and faced down illiberal members of the UN Human Rights Council.

Mr. Trump, with his off-color and politically-incorrect statements, makes an easy target. But, despite cries of ‘for shame,’ it is not his character that really bothers the left – after all, these are the people that brought you Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken and the Clintons – it is his policies. Progressives prefer a paternalistic state, with them in charge. As for Ms. Ryan, Mr. Trump had the correct response: He ignored her.

Ms. Pipes is president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute and author of “The False Promise of Single-Payer Health Care,” forthcoming from Encounter.

When Brian Day opened the Cambie Surgery Centre in 1996, he had a simple goal. Dr. Day, an orthopedic surgeon from Vancouver, British Columbia, wanted to provide timely, state-of-the-art medical care to Canadians who were unwilling to wait months—even years—for surgery they needed. Canada’s single-payer health-care system, known as Medicare, is notoriously sluggish. But private clinics like Cambie are prohibited from charging most patients for operations that public hospitals provide free. Dr. Day is challenging that prohibition before the provincial Supreme Court. If it rules in his favor, it could alter the future of Canadian health care.

Most Canadian hospitals are privately owned and operated but have just one paying “client”—the provincial government. The federal government in Ottawa helps fund the system, but the provinces pay directly for care. Some Canadians have other options, however. Private clinics like Cambie initially sprang up to treat members of the armed forces, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers, those covered by workers’ compensation and other protected classes exempt from the single-payer system.

People stuck on Medicare waiting lists can only dream of timely care. Last year, the median wait between referral from a general practitioner and treatment from a specialist was 21.2 weeks, or about five months—more than double the wait a quarter-century ago. Worse, the provincial governments lie about the extent of the problem. The official clock starts only when a surgeon books the patient, not when a general practitioner makes the referral. That adds months and sometimes much longer. In Novemberan Ontario woman learned she’d have to wait 4½ years to see a neurologist.

Some patients would gladly go to a clinic like Cambie for expedited care, paying either directly with their own money or indirectly via private insurance. But Canadian law bans private coverage for “medically necessary care” the public system provides and effectively forbids clinics from charging patients directly for such services. The government views this behavior as paying doctors to cut in line. Doctors who accept such payments can be booted from the single-payer system.

As an atheist I don’t pal around with very many Christians. I know plenty of non-practicing Jews. But I know no Muslims personally. To me, God has the same reality as does Allah, which is no reality at all. He has less substance than a Martian cloud.

Yet, I still feel compassion for Christians and Jews being persecuted by Muslims. They just want to be left alone to utter their hosannas. I do not frequent churches or synagogues; because these are not places I’m likely to encounter any intellectual discourse. However, the ongoing decimation of Jews and Christians at the hands of Muslims goes virtually unnoticed and reported by the MSM—in the Mideast and in France and practically any place you care to name.

I grew up in a Catholic home, so anti-Semitism has always been completely alien to me. It has a dozen or more bogus rationalisms to explain or justify it. “Jews are taking over the world. Jews run the banking business. Jews want the blood of your children. Jews this and Jews that, they’re to blame for your misery.” I guess an anti-Semite will claim that Jews exterminated the Martians, too. The most ludicrous instance of anti-Semitism is the Russian propaganda of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Reading through it I got the sense that I was reading a pretty awful science fiction novel or a Hollywood script.

The totalitarians in our midst, such as Senator Chuck Schumer, want you to obey, not call him names, and just let him have his way with you and the rest of the country. Speaking of deplorables:

Close to science fantasy and the elevation of the omniscient–ill feelings of a cackling bogeyman are the current and unshakable anti-Trump mentality of the MSM and the daily utterances of the political establishment, such those by Jeff Flake and Corey Booker.

Outgoing Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake came under fire for an astonishing attack on President Trump Wednesday, in which he accused Trump of using Stalinist language and promoting global instability with his criticism of the media.

‘Comparing the leader of the free world to murderous dictators is absurd,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tweeted. “You’ve gone too far.”

Women took to the streets again to protest. The signs were telling. One big one said “Pissed Off” others called for impeachment of Trump, several declaring “Not My President” and “We Came, We marched, and We made History Again! “(huh?) and “Smash the Patriarchy.”

President Trump tweeted this:

Donald J. Trump
✔ @realDonaldTrump
Beautiful weather all over our great country, a perfect day for all Women to March. Get out there now to celebrate the historic milestones and unprecedented economic success and wealth creation that has taken place over the last 12 months. Lowest female unemployment in 18 years!

He’s my President!

The anonymous attack on comedian Aziz Ansari, essentially for being a lousy date and inconsiderate sex partner, has led some to think that the spate of attacks on men for sexual harassment and assault might be slowing down. Although the account by “Grace,” the pseudonymous accuser, has been defended by many, others who have supported the outing of sexual assaulters have drawn the line at lumping bad dates in with more serious sexual malfeasance. Still others hope that the absurdity of Grace’s charges will force a rollback of the ever-escalating demonization of men guilty of nothing more than failing to fulfill a woman’s subjective expectations even when not made explicit.

Don’t count on it. Modern feminism for years has institutionalized a fundamental incoherence. Women are the equals of men and should have the same autonomy and agency, particularly over their sexual choices. At the same time, they need protection from men, who are empowered by a persistent “patriarchy” that encodes in women’s psyches a deference to that power. This internal contradiction has given us the snowflake feminists.

Feminist Contradictions
This incoherence, moreover, is nothing new. It has been obvious since the mid-1990s, when Rene Denfeld inThe New Victorians and Camille Paglia in “No Law in the Arena” analyzed how feminist ideology infantilizes women, making them out to be the helpless victims of “patriarchy.” Yet those exposés of feminist contradictions did not slow down, in subsequent decades, the diminishment of women’s sexual agency. In fact, the development on university campuses of restrictive policies regarding student social life and classroom behavior, and the unconstitutional campus investigations and punishments of men accused of sexual harassment and assault has spilled over into the larger culture. The #MeToo movement, which confuses prosecutable sexual assault with unsubstantiated accusations of boorish behavior, is the culmination of this decades-old process.

The contradictions of feminism, however, reflect a much larger problem, one endemic to any identity politics predicated on grievance and victimhood. Equity feminism, the demand for equal legal status, was a movement to sweep away the unjust laws and social mores that limited women’s lives. It assumed not that women were the same as men, but that they were capable of running their lives beyond the home, and did not need the tutelage of males. Voting, attending university, joining the workforce were all expressions of the personal autonomy that underlay their innate right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“Don’t tell your mother.” Parents teach their children to recognize these words to warn them of stranger danger. Exposure is the predator’s enemy. “Don’t tell your mother” is the victimizer’s watchword used to silence his/her victims. So it is in politics.

The leftist Democrat party has weaponized secrecy for political purposes. Exposure is their enemy. The Mueller “Russian collusion” probe, launched by a falsified dossier financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee to destroy candidate Trump, handed to the FBI by Republican political adversary John McCain, was deceitfully used by the Obama team to secure FISA warrants to spy on the Trump team.

The Mueller investigation designed to destroy President Trump has boomeranged on Obama by exposing the serious criminal actions taken by his administration to destroy candidate Trump and elect Obama’s legacy candidate Hillary Clinton. Mueller’s probe found no evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump and the only Russian collusion exposed by the investigation belongs to Hillary/Obama who sold Russia 20% of our uranium. Yet the probe continues.

Mueller’s campaign to destroy President Trump has exposed the staggering abuse of power by Obama’s administration in deliberately using the salacious dossier to secure FISA warrants to spy on Trump. Watergate was five bungling burglars – Obamagate involves his FBI, CIA, DOJ and the colluding mainstream media for censoring and manipulating factual coverage of this massive abuse of power. Yet the probe continues.

On 1.18.18 members of the House said they viewed a “shocking” classified memo allegedly detailing abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by senior Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigations officials in relation to the investigation of the Trump campaign and called for it to be declassified and available to the public immediately.

The Democrats responded with “Don’t tell your mother.”

Much has been said and written over the years about the blessings conferred by multiculturalism on the countries that have opened their doors to large numbers of immigrants and refugees. Multiculturalism has, apparently, fostered the (unexplained) virtues of “diversity,” repaid a debt incurred by the colonial West to those it has exploited, led to economic productivity, and contributed to the putative boon of an anti-border globalist world in which national animosities and military strife will become a thing of the past.

This was the idea behind the Schengen policy adopted by the European Union, the Diversity Visa Lottery or “chain migration” program in the U.S., and the hospitality to primarily Muslim immigration in my own country of Canada. Every one of these measures has, by any honest report, proven a failure.

The argument made by immigration and refugee enthusiasts, namely that the Western democracies were founded and settled by immigrants and therefore should continue to welcome newcomers, is valid only to a point. In the course of time the original settlers created a national identity, a sense of communal membership in a common world unified by custom and law. It is that identity that should be preserved. But owing to many factors, including a loss of confidence in the rectitude and worthiness of what came to be regarded as a racist and imperialist civilization, reasonably coherent societies have been gradually transformed into a mosaic of ethnicities.

To my dismay, Canada is no exception. Canadian immigration presumably operates on a merit system, but there is little evidence of it in practice. True to Liberalist form, our feckless Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on record as affirming that Canada has no identity. “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,” Trudeau told The New York Times, proclaiming Canada as “the first post-national state” held together not by a hard-earned tradition but by a shopping list of abstract values — compassion, respect, openness and the like. Trudeau continued: ‘‘Countries with a strong national identity — linguistic, religious or cultural — are finding it a challenge to effectively integrate people from different backgrounds.” This is true if one sees one’s country as a permanent airport terminal or a teeming bazaar, as Trudeau apparently does, viewing Canada as a country defined not by our history or proto-European origins, but by a “pan-cultural heritage.”

As Candice Malcolm, author of Losing True North: Justin Trudeau’s Assault on Canadian Citizenship, writes: “He doesn’t think there is anything special about Canadian history or traditions. Instead, he suggests Canada is nothing but an intellectual construct and a hodgepodge of various people, from various backgrounds, who just happen to live side by side in the territory known as Canada. Trudeau seems embarrassed, even ashamed of, our Western culture and values.”

It is no breaking news that Mahmoud Abbas, also known by his war name Abu Mazen is simply Arafat in a suit. Abbas was hailed as a “moderate” and “peace maker.” Weak kneed semi-supporters of Israel breathed a sigh of relief….they would not have to waste their time defending Israel and having those uncomfortable moments at dinner parties.

Why even Netanyahu accepted him as a “negotiator for peace.”He was described by fawning media as “a politician” and a “realist.”

They ignored his role in barbaric acts against Israeli civilians; his rewards to the families of terrorists; his praise of them in “the struggle”; his routine and diurnal fulminations against Israel-all in Arabic, of course.

In his own words celebrating terrorist killers: ““On the anniversary of the [Fatah] Launch, we renew the promise to our blessed Martyrs, that we will follow the path of the Martyr Brother Yasser Arafat and his comrades among the leaders of all the fighting forces, all the Martyrs.”

Now the mask is slipping and he is not what he seemed to the willfully stupid. Of course many are blaming President Trump for Abbas’ tantrum over recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’ capital.

You see, in the lexicon about the Arab war against Israel, “moderate” is defined as someone who would destroy Israel”peace-meal.” rsk