RUTHFULLY YOURS

BACK IN MONDAY OCTOBER 30

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.” John Maynard Keynes The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936

In universities, we were exposed – at times through the lens of prejudicial teachers, but ones with less bias than today – to the writings of political philosophers, from Socrates to Locke to Marx. We glimpsed the ancient Greeks and Romans. We read history and surveyed the Bible. We grazed on the works of economists, like Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek. While most of us did not study these philosophers and economists in detail, they were, at least, unmasked for our inspection. We were taught to think – to reason for ourselves – to determine what principles would help guide us past the Scyllas and the Charybdis’ we were bound to encounter. Today, too much focus in our universities is on issue-specific, special studies that pass as education.

It is the ability to think independently that is critical for democracy. Today, that is at risk. STEM programs help with jobs, but a vibrant democracy depends on a broadly educated electorate. For most older American, the concepts of personal liberty and economic freedom, along with a legacy of democracy and respect for institutions, are deeply ingrained. These beliefs have kept us free and democratic. Yet, youth today seems less critical, less challenging of their teachers. They believe what they hear and read in the mainstream media and on social media. The threat to democracy comes not from coarse, loud-mouthed people like Mr. Trump, but from subtle, cavalier politicians who surreptitiously insinuate themselves into our minds under the guise of doing good. To me, the biggest risk to our country is from within – elitists on both coasts, in the media, academia and in Washington, who use the threat of populism as justification for plutocracy.

Politics is an empirical process. Ours has changed over the past two hundred plus years, adapting to differing conditions and mores. The President is more isolated and more powerful. Congress has not expanded in line with the population growth, and has ceded responsibility to the Executive. Today, the judiciary (at least, those who are not activists) and local government most closely resemble what the Founders envisioned. Politicians, regardless of Party, exude an arrogance that sets them above those they represent. Many are hypocrites, spouting promises, with no intention of upholding them; passing laws, while exempting themselves; beholden to lobbyists and special interests, rather than the people; pledging prudence, but practicing profligacy. They use identity politics, which are counter-productive to assimilation and unity, leading, as they do, toward pluralism – a salad bowl instead of a melting pot.

Beware dogmatism born of ignorance. Like all self-respecting pundits, I see things I like and things I don’t. I have beliefs, and I have doubts. I do not believe climate skeptics are deniers, or that extremists come only from the Right, or that Francis Fukuyama was correct in proclaiming that the fall of the Soviet Union represented the end of history. I do not want to be lectured to by a supercilious Al Gore on climate – a man who made millions, while frightening gullible innocents. I do not want to be instructed on morality by cocky, ethically-challenged late-night hosts, like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. I do not want to be preached to by Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton on civility in politics, when they look upon conservatives as gun-toting, Bible-thumping “deplorables.” I do not want to listen to anti-Trump rants from sanctimonious Ivy League professors, hiding behind ivory towers. I don’t like duplicity or hypocrisy. I don’t like those who invoke identity politics, and I don’t respect those who use public fame to generate private wealth. I do not believe that any country, government, system or political party is perfect, but I do believe ours comes closest. I do like a sense of humor, civility and respect. I also believe that citizens have the responsibility to be conversant on matters of public policy, or, at least within reason, and that they should always exercise their right to vote. While unions have served a useful purpose, in recent times public sector ones have become more interested in preserving jobs and benefits, regardless of the costs to taxpayers. As well, in impeding progress by delaying or denying innovation, they have become advocates for the status quo.

Readers of the above statement will likely fall into two categories: those who knew this all along, and those who will find the statement absurd. I am putting this argument out there for the latter category and hopefully it will be read with an open mind. If you are the type of person who does not have the ability to question their own beliefs, and prefer the comfort of an echo-chamber, then this piece is probably not for you. I will offer only one caveat on my position: Donald Trump will only turn out to be more dangerous in the short-term if he blunders his way into a nuclear war.

Before I begin, I just want to make a couple of things clear. My political leanings would make me either a classical liberal, or perhaps a left-leaning libertarian, depending on the criteria used. I am not a conservative or a Trump supporter, but I have been forced to abandon my support for the Left because of its increasingly alarming and bizarre politics. I care deeply about my country and our precious and rare civilization. I dislike suffering, and wish to act in a way that minimizes it for all people. The reason that I am writing this piece is that I believe that we are being duped, and that this is going to lead to a lot of suffering in the future.

I believe that the tool that is being used to dupe us is political-correctness. It is a very powerful tool because it stifles all argument and creates the perfect conditions for mass manipulation of the population. Those in charge set all of the rules and conditions for conversation and a large percentage of the population becomes afraid to make statements that they know to be true; or worse, are forced to make statements that they know to be untrue. Christopher Hitchens issued a warning about this more than twenty years ago when he said, “There’s a police-state coming, get used to it. And it will all be done in the name of niceness”. Well, it’s arrived.

We currently live in what I would argue is the best civilization ever created in any place or at any time in human history. It isn’t perfect, but it is amazing when you consider our humble beginnings and if you compare us to the rest of the planet. If our great civilization were to be compromised past a certain point, there is a strong likelihood that it would never recover. No one knows for sure if the society that we find ourselves in is even our natural state – it might be an anomaly. If it is, we had better be extremely careful with it. I would say, based on a quick look around the world, that our society is an anomaly. The massive amounts of luck combined with the bits of design that got us to this point should not be taken for granted; indeed, this would be a fatal mistake that could devastate our society and leave it severely degraded for future generations. While the current state of our society provides most of us with much freedom and also an excellent quality of life, the future could easily provide only poverty and violence. Be very wary of a desire for too much change.

And now on to my argument:

I have studied Justin Trudeau very carefully for quite some time now and I have not noticed anything that would justify the fawning adulation that is heaped on him by the media. In fact, when I study him, the word that immediately comes to mind is twit. I don’t say this lightly or just to be insulting – it is exactly how I feel. Now, to be fair, I also agree with much of the constant criticism that we all hear about Donald Trump. Now that I’ve gotten this very minor name calling out of the way, I will move on to the important distinctions between the two men.

There are two things about Donald Trump that remind me of George W. Bush. The first of those things is a willingness to acknowledge his country of birth as a great civilization. The second is a natural extension of the first: the need to protect that civilization. And while I have always found both of them painful to listen to, I respect them both for their willingness to engage difficult topics and also to start a fight if necessary. It’s as if both of them are blessed with a deeply ingrained and innate sense that their civilization is worth defending. Trump doesn’t seem to have the ability or the desire to articulate his position in satisfying terms; however, maybe that quality doesn’t need to be articulated, as it’s something we can actually see. I think that this allows me to say that the very least you could say about Trump, however you feel about him, is that he is not going to let anything happen to his country without a fight – and that’s important. Actually, it is the fundamental quality that is required for a nation’s long-term survival in anything resembling desirable conditions.

While Trump is a constant bungler, egomaniac, hot-head, and possibly a corrupt individual, he does not engage in the vile and always eventually deadly game called identity-politics. This is a big deal and it’s likely the biggest contributing factor in Trump’s victory. So, while Trump has many faults, his basic instinct to protect the US and maintain its status as a great civilization, while avoiding identity-politics all together, is worthy of some respect. He also came right out and said that he “doesn’t do political-correctness” – again, worthy of respect.

Justin Trudeau, on the other hand, does not seem to have anything innate about him that is worthy of respect. He has made some very troubling statements that make this very obvious. He has expressed a desire to see Canada as “the first post-national state” and said that “there is no core identity or mainstream in Canada”. These are alarming statements, and yet, they have gone largely unnoticed. The reason for this is that the media have given him a free pass in the same way that the mainstream media in the US gave Bill Clinton a free pass after he had executed a mentally ill black man whose IQ was so low that he asked to save his desert until after his execution. Like Trudeau, Clinton was the charming new Liberal and the narrative had to be maintained at any cost. This is exactly the same type of sickly behaviour that we are currently witnessing by the main-stream media towards Justin Trudeau.

Not one mainstream media outlet stopped to ask by what right Trudeau could decide that Canada had no core identity, and why he thought that he was entitled to allow its carefully constructed and unique society to be hollowed out and left to rot by his own personal agenda. He claims to have undertaken this project on behalf of Canadians. The CBC – the country’s excessively large public broadcaster and recipient of Trudeau’s promise to increase funding if elected – did not invite any serious opposing viewpoints to counter his alarming statements. Every time Trump tweets or makes any kind of statement on any topic, no matter how benign, the media goes into high gear to discredit and mock it. And whenever Trudeau goes for a jog or changes his socks, the entire news industry starts giggling, blushing, and fawning on him in the most disgusting way. Why the glaring contradiction? The media used to complain that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives were secretive and overly controlling with information. Trudeau’s government has turned out to be even more secretive, and as a result, information is more difficult to acquire through the Freedom of Information program. Still, the media seem interested only in telling us about his latest photo-bomb incident or his latest socks, while displaying a pseudo-journalistic style that can only be described as ditzy.

You know the warning “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones?”
Hillary Clinton compares Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein: ‘We just elected someone who admitted sexual assault as president’http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-harvey-weinstein-11345108

She said such behaviour “cannot be tolerated anywhere, whether it’s in entertainment, politics – after all we have someone admitting to be a sexual assaulter in the Oval Office”

The former Democratic Presidential nominee sat down for an interview with the BBC and was initially asked about the allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

“This kind of behavior cannot be tolerated anywhere, whether it’s in entertainment, politics, after all, we have someone admitting to being a sexual assaulter in the Oval Office,” Clinton said.

The interviewer responded to Clinton’s comments by pointing out that the same allegations have been made about her husband, former President Bill Clinton. “That has all been litigated. That was [the] subject of a huge investigation in the late ’90s and there were conclusions drawn. That was clearly in the past.”

When she did address allegations surrounding Weinstein, however, Clinton said she was shocked and appalled to hear the news.

American conservatism is having something of an identity crisis. Most conservatives supported Donald Trump last November. But many prominent conservative intellectuals—journalists, academics and think-tank personalities—have entrenched themselves in bitter opposition. Some have left the Republican Party, while others are waging guerrilla warfare against a Republican administration. Longtime friendships have been ended and resignations tendered. Talk of establishing a new political party alternates with declarations that Mr. Trump will be denied the GOP nomination in 2020.

Those in the “Never Trump” camp say the cause of the split is the president—that he’s mentally unstable, morally unspeakable, a leftist populist, a rightist authoritarian, a danger to the republic. One prominent Republican told me he is praying for Mr. Trump to have a brain aneurysm so the nightmare can end.

But the conservative unity that Never Trumpers seek won’t be coming back, even if the president leaves office prematurely. An apparently unbridgeable ideological chasm is opening between two camps that were once closely allied. Mr. Trump’s rise is the effect, not the cause, of this rift.

There are two principal causes: first, the increasingly rigid ideology conservative intellectuals have promoted since the end of the Cold War; second, a series of events—from the failed attempt to bring democracy to Iraq to the implosion of Wall Street—that have made the prevailing conservative ideology seem naive and reckless to the broader conservative public.

A good place to start thinking about this is a 1989 essay in the National Interest by Charles Krauthammer. The Cold War was coming to an end, and Mr. Krauthammer proposed it should be supplanted by what he called “Universal Dominion” (the title of the essay): America was going to create a Western “super-sovereign” that would establish peace and prosperity throughout the world. The cost would be “the conscious depreciation not only of American sovereignty, but of the notion of sovereignty in general.”

William Kristol and Robert Kagan presented a similar view in their 1996 essay “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy” in Foreign Affairs, which proposed an American “benevolent global hegemony” that would have “preponderant influence and authority over all others in its domain.”

Then, as now, conservative commentators insisted that the world should want such an arrangement because the U.S. knows best: The American way of politics, based on individual liberties and free markets, is the right way for human beings to live everywhere. Japan and Germany, after all, were once-hostile authoritarian nations that had flourished after being conquered and acquiescing in American political principles. With the collapse of communism, dozens of countries—from Eastern Europe to East Asia to Latin America—seemed to need, and in differing degrees to be open to, American tutelage of this kind. As the bearer of universal political truth, the U.S. was said to have an obligation to ensure that every nation was coaxed, maybe even coerced, into adopting its principles.

Any foreign policy aimed at establishing American universal dominion faces considerable practical challenges, not least because many nations don’t want to live under U.S. authority. But the conservative intellectuals who have set out to promote this Hegelian world revolution must also contend with a problem of different kind: Their aim cannot be squared with the political tradition for which they are ostensibly the spokesmen.

For centuries, Anglo-American conservatism has favored individual liberty and economic freedom. But as the Oxford historian of conservatism Anthony Quinton emphasized, this tradition is empiricist and regards successful political arrangements as developing through an unceasing process of trial and error. As such, it is deeply skeptical of claims about universal political truths. The most important conservative figures—including John Fortescue, John Selden, Montesquieu, Edmund Burke and Alexander Hamilton —believed that different political arrangements would be fitting for different nations, each in keeping with the specific conditions it faces and traditions it inherits. What works in one country can’t easily be transplanted.

On that view, the U.S. Constitution worked so well because it preserved principles the American colonists had brought with them from England. The framework—the balance between the executive and legislative branches, the bicameral legislature, the jury trial and due process, the bill of rights—was already familiar from the English constitution. Attempts to transplant Anglo-American political institutions in places such as Mexico, Nigeria, Russia and Iraq have collapsed time and again, because the political traditions needed to maintain them did not exist. Even in France, Germany and Italy, representative government failed repeatedly into the mid-20th century (recall the collapse of France’s Fourth Republic in 1958), and has now been shunted aside by a European Union whose notorious “democracy deficit” reflects a continuing inability to adopt Anglo-American constitutional norms.

The “universal dominion” agenda is flatly contradicted by centuries of Anglo-American conservative political thought. This may be one reason that some post-Cold War conservative intellectuals have shifted to calling themselves “classical liberals.” Last year Paul Ryan insisted: “I really call myself a classical liberal more than a conservative.” Mr. Kristol tweeted in August: “Conservatives could ‘rebrand’ as liberals. Seriously. We’re for liberal democracy, liberal world order, liberal economy, liberal education.”

What is “classical liberalism,” and how does it differ from conservatism? As Quinton pointed out, the liberal tradition descends from Hobbes and Locke, who were not empiricists but rationalists: Their aim was to deduce universally valid political principles from self-evident axioms, as in mathematics.

In his “Second Treatise on Government” (1689), Locke asserts that universal reason teaches the same political truths to all human beings; that all individuals are by nature “perfectly free” and “perfectly equal”; and that obligation to political institutions arises only from the consent of the individual. From these assumptions, Locke deduces a political doctrine that he supposes must hold good in all times and places.

The term “classical liberal” came into use in 20th-century America to distinguish the supporters of old-school laissez-faire from the welfare-state liberalism of figures such as Franklin D. Roosevelt. Modern classical liberals, inheriting the rationalism of Hobbes and Locke, believe they can speak authoritatively to the political needs of every human society, everywhere. In his seminal work, “Liberalism” (1927), the great classical-liberal economist Ludwig von Mises thus advocates a “world super-state really deserving of the name,” which will arise if we “succeed in creating throughout the world . . . nothing less than unqualified, unconditional acceptance of liberalism. Liberal thinking must permeate all nations, liberal principles must pervade all political institutions.”

Friedrich Hayek, the leading classical-liberal theorist of the 20th century, likewise argued, in a 1939 essay, for replacing independent nations with a world-wide federation: “The abrogation of national sovereignties and the creation of an effective international order of law is a necessary complement and the logical consummation of the liberal program.”

Classical liberalism thus offers ground for imposing a single doctrine on all nations for their own good. It provides an ideological basis for an American universal dominion.

By contrast, Anglo-American conservatism historically has had little interest in putatively self-evident political axioms. Conservatives want to learn from experience what actually holds societies together, benefits them and destroys them. That empiricism has persuaded most Anglo-American conservative thinkers of the importance of traditional Protestant institutions such as the independent national state, biblical religion and the family.

As an English Protestant, Locke could have endorsed these institutions as well. But his rationalist theory provides little basis for understanding their role in political life. Even today liberals are plagued by this failing: The rigidly Lockean assumptions of classical-liberal writers such as Hayek, Milton Friedman, Robert Nozick and Ayn Rand place the nation, the family and religion outside the scope of what is essential to know about politics and government. Students who grow up reading these brilliant writers develop an excellent grasp of how an economy works. But they are often marvelously ignorant about much else, having no clue why a flourishing state requires a cohesive nation, or how such bonds are established through family and religious ties.

The differences between the classical-liberal and conservative traditions have immense consequences for policy. Establishing democracy in Egypt or Iraq looks doable to classical liberals because they assume that human reason is everywhere the same, and that a commitment to individual liberties and free markets will arise rapidly once the benefits have been demonstrated and the impediments removed. Conservatives, on the other hand, see foreign civilizations as powerfully motivated—for bad reasons as well as good ones—to fight the dissolution of their way of life and the imposition of American values.

Integrating millions of immigrants from the Middle East also looks easy to classical liberals, because they believe virtually everyone will quickly see the advantages of American (or European) ways and accept them upon arrival. Conservatives recognize that large-scale assimilation can happen only when both sides are highly motivated to see it through. When that motivation is weak or absent, conservatives see an unassimilated migration, resulting in chronic mutual hatred and violence, as a perfectly plausible outcome.

Since classical liberals assume reason is everywhere the same, they see no great danger in “depreciating” national independence and outsourcing power to foreign bodies. American and British conservatives see such schemes as destroying the unique political foundation upon which their traditional freedoms are built.

Liberalism and conservatism had been opposed political positions since the day liberal theorizing first appeared in England in the 17th century. During the 20th-century battles against totalitarianism, necessity brought their adherents into close alliance. Classical liberals and conservatives fought together, along with communists, against Nazism. After 1945 they remained allies against communism. Over many decades of joint struggle, their differences were relegated to a back burner, creating a “fusionist” movement (as William F. Buckley’s National Review called it) in which one and all saw themselves as “conservatives.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Hugh Hefner insisted he made the world a better place by way of large breasts and air-brushed pudenda, while Harvey Weinstein reckoned being a champion of liberal causes entitled him to starlets on demand. Neither noticed how times, as they say, are changing.

It is less than three weeks since the “American icon,” Hugh Hefner, breathed his last in the Playboy mansion and was transported to California to be interred in a mausoleum next door to the body of Marilyn Monroe. He and Monroe never met, but she was the first of the naked celebrities who became the hallmark of Playboy, appearing both on the cover of its first 1953 issue and as its first centerfold and apparently ensuring that the magazine sold out. Ever the sentimentalist, Hefner spent a full $75,000 on a grave in this desirable location. He liked the idea, he said, of spending eternity next to the famous and fragile movie-star.

Marilyn was not available for comment, but she might have been annoyed that none of the $75,000 went to her, just as she never received any payment from Playboy for the photographs that began the making of its fortune. Four years earlier, badly needing the cash, she had received $50 for the photographs which, in the manner of these things, passed through several hands until they reached Hefner’s and those of his customers.

If Hefner and Monroe end up in the same part of the Next World, which is questionable, she might have something to say about this pay differential. But then so might a large number of other “playmates.”

These and other details of “Hef’s” iconic life were revealed with a sympathy at times amounting to reverence in most of the media obituaries that followed his death. Their theme was that he was the man who brought the sexual revolution to America, advanced the civil rights revolution alongside it, and combined these two revolutions in a sophisticated liberal lifestyle package that appealed to an American middle class then emerging from a restrictive puritan ideal.

There were, of course, qualifications. Hefner had some help in spreading the Playboy philosophy from the Pill, the Kinsey Report, and the growing liberalism of American law. The philosophy itself, together with the consumer lifestyle it promoted, were obviously directed more to the tastes and interests of men, in particular bachelors, than to those of women. (Indeed, Hefner was quick to identify the feminists of the Sixties and Seventies as enemies of the entire Playboy phenomenon.) As a result of such changing tastes, Playboyism, like its leading exponent, looked increasingly dated and “unsophisticated.” And, finally, it was impossible to ignore that the high-minded philosophizing and consumer empire both rested on naked female flesh.

The New York Times got the balance right. Its obituary leaned to the favourable:

“Hefner the man and Playboy the brand . . . . both advertised themselves as emblems of the sexual revolution, an escape from American priggishness and wider social intolerance. Both were derided over the years — as vulgar, as adolescent, as exploitative and finally as anachronistic. But Mr. Hefner was a stunning success from the moment he emerged in the early 1950s.”

And an assessment by the paper’s leading conservative columnist, Ross Douthat, was close to an exorcism:

“Hugh Hefner, gone to his reward at the age of 91, was a pornographer and chauvinist who got rich on masturbation, consumerism and the exploitation of women, aged into a leering grotesque in a captain’s hat, and died a pack rat in a decaying manse where porn blared during his pathetic orgies.

Hef was the grinning pimp of the sexual revolution, with Quaaludes for the ladies and Viagra for himself — a father of smut addictions and eating disorders, abortions and divorce and syphilis, a pretentious huckster who published Updike stories no one read while doing flesh procurement for celebrities, a revolutionary whose revolution chiefly benefited men much like himself.”

When I read Mr. Douthat’s words of brimstone, I thought he might be stoned by righteously indignant libertines. He did attract some abuse, but also a surprising number of sympathizers who began along such lines as: “I never thought I would agree with Mr. Douthat but . . .” That becomes more understandable when you read both Douthat and the anonymous editorialist carefully and realize that they contain more overlap and less contradiction than a hasty reading might suggest.

Their rhetoric is sharply different; the facts they describe are much the same. What makes the difference is the attitude each writer takes to Hefner’s life. Planting himself firmly on traditional Christian ground, Mr. Douthat, a believing Catholic, thinks he opened a gateway to the moral squalor of today’s American popular culture; the NYT scribe, standing on a surfboard as it hurtles down the stream of that culture, treats Hefner as, on balance, a pioneer who (doubtless reacting to an oppressive puritanism) went too far in the right direction and so into seedy, exploitative, and vulgar territory.

The reaction after every mass shooting follows a predictable script written by progressives to serve their political agenda. No claim about the efficacy of gun control, no matter how many times repudiated by facts, can stop the Dems and their media spaniels from ritually invoking it to demonize conservatives.

Why should we be surprised? By now it should be clear that the “party of science” is interested not in truth and evidence, but in ideology and partisan advantage. Yet those with common sense and an awareness of the facts still have to restate the obvious, even though it will make no difference to partisans either ignorant of or indifferent to any reality that doesn’t serve their interests. For what is at stake is not just one right, but the foundations of our political freedom in self-evident, God-given rights.

We all know the worn-out ideas that the progressives predictably trot out after every massacre. And we know they are fallacious. More guns do not lead to more gun murder. Between 1993 and 2013, private gun ownership increased 56%, and gun homicides declined 49%. No, the point is not that more guns account for the declines, a straw-man correlation the media burns down to discredit this fact. The point is, the left’s call for more gun control after every mass shooting implies that fewer guns or more regulations would decrease murder rates. Not only is that idea false, the opposite is true: higher murder rates invariably follow more gun control.

“Common sense regulations” is another nostrum of the left. We’ve had several laboratories for testing this hypothesis––Chicago, D.C., Baltimore, and most blue-state big cities have strict controls on guns, at the same time they have some of the highest rates of gun deaths. That’s because regulations on firearms are effective only for law-abiding citizens who don’t need such restraints. But for criminals they are “parchment barriers” easily ignored. If such government regulations were effective, we wouldn’t still be waging a decades-long war on drugs, which hasn’t stopped any teenager in America from getting any drug he wants. It’s unclear how the most draconian restrictions on gun ownership would be any more effective than the numerous laws that have failed to keep drugs from pouring into our country and being widely distributed.

Most important, the left is indifferent to the fact that the Constitution explicitly states that citizens have the right to “keep and bear arms.” Like all the enumerated rights, this one is not a gift of government, but an “inalienable” right, like the right of self-defense, we possess by virtue of being a human being. The bar for restricting these rights is very high, as it is for the right to free speech.

But the left has always despised the notion of natural rights and consider them a relic of our more ignorant and superstitious past, not to mention a check on their desire to concentrate and expand the government’s power. Contrary to the belief that rights are gifts of “nature and nature’s God,” the progressives argue that a benevolent government should create rights compatible with the its alleged purpose to achieve “equality” and “social justice.” Hence Franklin Roosevelt’s “new bill of rights,” which was promulgated in his 1944 State of the Union address, and included a “useful and remunerative job” and “adequate medical care”––good things to have, but not rights properly understood. But if government can invent such “rights,” the government can also modify or eliminate those it now deems have become dangerous anachronisms or impediments to social improvement.

After the Las Vegas massacre, the Daily Kos gave a typical example of this sentiment:

America needs to declare total war on guns, and that means reinterpreting or repealing the Second Amendment. The latter would be best. There is no sane reason why you or I should be granted the sacred and inviolable right to bear pistols, shotguns, automatic rifles, submachine guns, machine guns, flamethrowers, grenade launchers, anti-tank guns, and other “hunting and self-defense tools.”

After pistols, of course, the rest of the weapons are already illegal or strictly controlled. But misinformation and exaggeration are necessary tactics for making this specious argument against natural rights.

The sentiment, however, is an old staple of the left. Last year Rolling Stone made this same argument, saying the “Founders were wrong” about a Second Amendment that is “outdated, a threat to liberty, and a suicide pact.” Hence “the Second Amendment is wrong for this country and needs to be jettisoned.” Like the progressives of a hundred years ago, the author argues that technological change has made the right to bear arms a dangerous anachronism.

The Left hijacked the label “Liberal.” Yet they favor an empowered government and diminished rights for individuals. Is it liberal to hamper free speech on the nation’s campuses, for fear that alternative speech may offer preferred venues, or lest conservative speech may offend sensitive ears? Are liberals progressive, when they put the wishes of union bosses ahead of workers who would rather not pay dues that fund policies and politicians with which and with whom they disagree? Is it liberal to protect entrenched, unionized businesses against “disruptive” technologies such as Uber, in London and New York City?

Labels can be misleading. Democrats are better than Republicans in framing arguments with grandiloquent words and phrases. They create slogans and acronyms that can be contrary to the policies they represent. Those on the Right are less nuanced – less imaginative. The word “conservative,” for example, conjures images of old white men in club chairs, drinking brandy and soda. Yet, most Republicans live in “Red” states, less affluent than states that house Democrats. They do not look backward to privilege, wealth and biases against race, gender, creed and sexual orientation. Their wants are simple. They cherish the dignity of a good-paying job. They want the opportunity a good education provides. They want to conserve a culture that encourage faithfulness, thrift, hard work, respectfulness, responsibility and accountability. They believe in JFKs assertion: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country.”

Today, liberals want to protect people against speech they deem harmful. When I was a child and teased at school, I would come home in tears. My mother would repeat an adage whose roots go back to an 1862 publication of the African Methodist Episcopal Church: “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Such stoicism is no longer deemed appropriate. Words can be hurtful, Leftists claim, so “safe places” must be available. Limits on speech are, thus, permitted.

Consider “net neutrality.” How could any free-market pundit be against a label that suggests openness and unfettered access? But net neutrality is a directive issued by the Obama Administration that turns the internet into a regulated utility. It was marketed as a defense against big internet service providers (ISPs), cable and telecom companies. Proponents of Net Neutrality claim they have too much power – to speed up or slow down internet access. Liberals want them regulated, like public utilities. What proponents do not say is that ISPs, like Comcast and AT&T, owe their bigness to regulation. Better service and lower prices do not come from the beneficence of government, but from competition. As well, net neutrality says nothing about far bigger internet players, like Amazon, Facebook and Google, who monopolize content. With billions of subscribers, our values today are more influenced by Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg than all the churches, synagogues and mosques in the country.

Think of “sanctuary cities.” They were once havens to shelter the innocent, but have become asylums to protect criminal aliens. Sanctuary cities claim to be humanitarian, yet they destabilize civil society by ignoring the rule of law; for example, federal detention orders from ICE (Immigration and Custom Enforcement). We saw this in 2015 when Mexican-illegal Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, who had been deported five times for seven felony convictions and who found in San Francisco a sanctuary, shot and killed Kate Steinle. Last fall, in Twin Falls, Idaho a city that declared itself as “welcoming”, three young Muslim migrants raped and then urinated in the mouth of a five-year-old girl. Wendy Olson, an Obama-appointed U.S, Attorney, threatened to prosecute any who spoke out about the crime in ways she considered “false” or “inflammatory.” Yet, words could not have exceeded the brutality of what those thugs did. Prosecutors are supposed to enforce laws, not create them. There was nothing “humanitarian” or “welcoming” about either incident. Civil society depends on obeisance to laws. In a democracy, no one, no town, no city, stands above the law.

If your ancestors, dear reader, were Europeans of any sort, know that they threw us out of their countries, or stood aside while we were persecuted, evicted and murdered. So emulate us and get a life! As individuals we have not spent 3,500 years wallowing in self-pity. We get on with it and so should you.

So you belong to a group of people who are feeling offended by other people’s attitudes towards you? Is that right?

Well, here is some advice from someone whose people have been offended by other peoples’ attitudes, hate speech, assaults, random and mob murders, mass evictions, and organised genocides on a scale not known before or since. The advice – “Get a life! Get on with living!”

My people have been insulted, humiliated, despised and rejected to such an extent that it is the Western tradition and the vituperation directed against us is the longest hatred. This venom goes back more than 3,000 years.

Since we first lived amongst the ancient Egyptians, we were despised by them and then by their conquerors, the ancient Greeks and Romans. We have been evicted from every European country, unless we were first killed or handed over to organised killers.

If your ancestors, dear reader, are European of any sort, they threw us of their countries, or stood aside while we were evicted, persecuted and murdered. If you’re a Muslim, your ancestors, in the days of the great Islamic Empires, relegated us to the inferior status of dhimmi.

Many of you are descended from ancestors who participated in the Crusades, which ‘incidentally’ killed my people while plundering through Europe en route to ‘liberating’ Jerusalem from the Muslims.

We were evicted from England in 1290, from Spain and Portugal in 1492, confined to the Pale of Settlement in Czarist Russia and forced into paying Russian “candle” and “box” taxes levied only on us.

We were not welcomed, despite being on the electoral roll, in the British Parliament, until 1885. Our numbers at Harvard, Princeton and Yale universities were limited. We were excluded from the Royal Sydney Golf Club and the Melbourne Club.

More recently, of course, the Final Solution, to which but a gallant and courageous few of your recent forebears objected. Your grandparents were citizens of countries, including Australia, which refused sanctuary to my people trying to flee Nazi terror.

And, after we finally managed to establish a sanctuary on a tiny piece of ancestral Mediterranean land, from which we had repeatedly been ejected over the past 2,500 years, 900,000 of us were thrown out of nearby Islamic countries. Having established that tiny sanctuary, my people have been repeatedly attacked, not only by invading armies, but by international organisations whose constituent nations are so dependent on Islamic oil that they care nothing for criticising or opposing those attacks.

And you are offended! Offended by something said about, or denied to, your people in the last few years or centuries. Sorry, but that does not compare with our multi-millennial entitlement to take genuine offence.

So emulate us and get a life! That is what we have done – and still do. As individuals. We have not spent 3,500 years wallowing in self-pity. We have got on with it.

Above all, we have valued education. Our Nobel Prize and Fields Medal recipients are totally disproportionate to our numbers. Imagine 0.2% of the world’s population winning more than 22% of Nobel prizes in medicine and the sciences! Our little strip of Mediterranean land provides the technology you use every day in you iPhone, your USB sticks and your computers.

Oh, you might still be wondering which group of people I belong to. The group of people still hated by tens of thousands – as expressed in their websites and blogs, and whose existence is threatened daily by Iranian mullahs. A clue… our motto is “To life!” Does that ring a bell? What about Fiddler on the Roof?

So, to my fellow citizens who feel offended, who feel insulted, by the way some bigot refers to them, who feel that “the others” owe you something , to you I say get over it! Get a life! By all means possible, draw attention to your critics’ and tormenters’ stupidity, but don’t let hurt feelings dominate your life. Get on with making the most of what you can, with your own talents.

We Jews have done it for 3,500 years. You can too.