RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/04/franklins_admonition

““A republic, if you can keep it.” What I once thought of as a quaint, half tongue-in-cheek caution, I now see as an earnest admonition. July 4 commemorates not only America’s independence from Great Britain, but also its assumption among the powers of the earth of a form of government dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Our society’s recent descent into tribalism is sharply at odds with that experiment in aspiration. It’s time we grew up and embraced the wisdom of our Founders. ”

“A republic, if you can keep it.” 

That was Ben Franklin’s famous response when asked, as the Constitutional Convention ended in 1787, what sort of government the delegates had crafted.

Time was, I thought Franklin’s answer droll. But as July 4, 2020, comes into view, I wonder. A republic depends on the rule of law. The rule of law has been having a hard time of it lately. So: Can we keep it? 

I have never been tempted to equate the equality celebrated by the Declaration of Independence with egalitarianism. The philosopher Harvey Mansfield was obviously correct, I believe, when he spoke of the “self-evident half-truth that all men are created equal.” 

Differences in talent, disposition, family situation, and plain dumb luck inevitably result in differences in achievement. As James Madison put it in Federalist 10, the rights of property originate in “diversity in the faculties of men.” Protecting those faculties, he said, “is the first object of government.” 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-diversity-trap-jilani

Progressive ideas about diversity have taken over the corporate world but they offer a skin-deep version obsessed only with color and conformity.

A shallow, reductive version of diversity that first gained a foothold in progressive political spaces has rapidly spread across American institutions and the corporate world. It values skin color and other inherited characteristics above all else, largely ignores class issues, and overlooks the benefits of real diversity, like the anti-fragile resilience created by fostering people with different viewpoints. Yet, despite the many flaws and dangers of this new orthodoxy—or perhaps because of them—anyone who challenges it, risks damage to their career and social life.

Just look at the case of Denise Young Smith. Young Smith spent almost two decades working her way up in Apple, becoming one of the few black people to ever reach its executive team. She was named vice president of diversity and inclusion, and in 2017 traveled to the One Young World Summit in Bogotá, Colombia.

At the summit, she was asked by a reporter whether black women would be a priority in her new role promoting diversity in the company. In her answer, she described a lonely rise through the ranks: “I’ve been black and a woman for a long time. I have been a first, I’ve been an only,” she said. She talked about hearing from other black women in the industry who shared stories about people assuming they were the assistant or secretary rather than the manager.

Her words were a powerful testament to anyone who has ever been stereotyped or been on the receiving end of low expectations due to the color of their skin.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/04/a-magnificent-speech/

Donald Trump did not mention Lincoln’s First Inaugural address in his speech commemorating the spirit of American Independence at Mount Rushmore on Friday night. But the president’s speech—perhaps his most forceful and eloquent to date—vibrated with the same energy and existential commitment that fired Lincoln in March 1861. 

Lincoln came to office at a time of crisis. His election had precipitated the secession of seven Southern states. His inaugural address was both a plea for conciliation and unity as well as a warning that violence would be stopped with force. “We are not enemies, but friends,” Lincoln said. 

Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Donald Trump issued a kindred invitation to unity in the midst of conflict. The signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in July 1776 was a world-historical event. It represented, the president rightly said, “the culmination of thousands of years of Western Civilization—and the triumph not only of spirit, but of wisdom, philosophy, and reason.” At the center of the triumph was the animating possession of liberty, made possible by the unanimous affirmation of the principles Thomas Jefferson articulated in the Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . .” 

The president’s speech was a passionate celebration of American freedom and American greatness—a greatness, he noted, that was embodied by the sublime majesty of the heads of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt sculpted into the granite pinnacle of Mt. Rushmore. 

But just as Lincoln spoke on the eve of civil war, so Donald Trump spoke in the midst of widespread and organized violence against the emblems and the spirit of the American promise. “[T]here is,” he warned, “a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought, struggled, and bled to secure.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/flawed_greatness_the_american_story_is_the_human_story.html

The American story is a beautiful one. Our revolutionary foundation built upon natural rights and the nature of man was the starkest break from societal norms the world has ever known.

The focus of the Declaration of Independence was to provide the litany of grievances American colonials had against the king to justify our break from Britain’s despotic grip. That said, something much more powerful was born from this document: the American Soul.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

What seemed like an obscure addition or eloquent wordsmanship set the foundation of the American Creed. We are all created equal in the eyes of God. Natural rights are not bestowed upon us by governments, but instead governments are “instituted among men” to secure the inalienable rights we are born with.

Joseph Ellis writes, “With these words, Jefferson had smuggled the revolutionary agenda into the founding document, casually and almost inadvertently planting the seeds that would grow into the expanding mandate for individual rights that eventually ended slavery, made women’s suffrage inevitable, and sanctioned the civil rights of all minorities.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/03/lets-move-statues-honoring-heroes-to-places-that-will-protect-and-preserve-our-history/

Growing up, these commentators were taught and unashamedly believed that America was the greatest nation on earth. Today, understatement aside, that conviction is no longer entirely fashionable.

Now, people across the country watch in horror as memorials to men and women widely regarded as heroes in establishing that greatness are threatened, toppled or taken away:

Christopher Columbus, once hailed as “the discoverer of America,” but now no longer welcome even in the state capital named after him.
George Washington, long revered as the “Father of His Country,” and Thomas Jefferson, honored this weekend in particular as the primary author of the Declaration of Independence – today reduced to mere “slaveholders” in the minds of much of the public.
Andrew Jackson, stalwart defender of the Union whose majestic mounted sculpture in Lafayette Park was vandalized in full view of the White House.
Teddy Roosevelt, the progressive who risked his reputation to invite Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House and courageously advocated better conditions for African-Americans.
Ulysses Grant, who as commander of the Union forces won the war that freed slaves and as president was recognized as an early proponent of civil rights.
Stunningly, abolitionists such as Matthias Baldwin, John Greenleaf Whittier, or William Seward.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/03/if-you-really-believe-black-lives-matter-stop-s
Impassioned Americans don’t understand that Black Lives Matter is a rhetorical facade masking Marxist ideas that would destroy the lives of vulnerable Americans.

When people and organizations throw money at identity politics, do they know that the causes they support conflict with their purported goals?

Black Lives Matter (BLM) cloaks itself in garb of justice and morality. By its very name, well-intentioned people are compelled to support it. After all, who does not think the lives of black people matter? Uninformed yet impassioned Americans are unaware that the organization’s name is a rhetorical facade that masks a Marxist core.

The truth is that the three people who founded BLM include two avowed Marxist organizers and an activist sympathizer. Beyond supporting more “mainstream” leftist positions, such as socialized health care and dramatically increased taxes, BLM’s platform has historically called for more radical policies. These include creating collective ownership in black communities, instituting reparations including for illegal aliens, defunding the police, and “disrupt[ing] the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”

The Evil Underpinnings of BLM

BLM, like the Women’s March, has from its start been ardently antisemitic. Members of BLM carried out a pogrom in the Los Angeles area in May during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. You probably never heard about it because in the intersectional left-wing milieu, Ashkenazi Jews sit at or near the apex of the privilege pyramid.

That is, the descendants of Eastern European Jews, 6 million of whom were massacred during the Holocaust, are considered by BLM and its ideological cohorts to be the world’s greatest victimizers. For the like-minded media, covering such atrocities would only undermine the narrative and hurt the cause, so they remain silent. For BLM, antisemitism is not a cancellable offense.

https://canadafreepress.com/article/once-again-president-trump-hands-democrats-enough-rope

Vast majority of American citizens want to pursue their careers, raise their families, and have money in their pockets, peace in their hearts and safety in their homes

Here’s an old, irrefutable chestnut: If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!

But Regressives refuse to learn that lesson and are yet again falling into the chasm of a trap President Trump has set for them.

Listen to the uproar the mostly-leftist media bleat every minute of every day: Why aren’t the president and his Republican colleagues saying anything, doing anything about all the destruction and madness that the [Democrat-approved] anarchists are wreaking throughout the country––the arson, smashed windows, destroyed businesses, separatist zones in Seattle and NY City, defund-the-police initiatives, out-of-control thuggery, on and on?

THE MEME THING

Yet the silence persists. Does even one person on the planet think this is a coincidence? A fluke? An historical aberration?

Just as Democrats send out daily talking points––remember the Dick Cheney “gravitas” meme that every media person echoed ad nauseam and then never said the word again after Bush 2 was elected?

Same thing today after Regressives learned that the word “defunding” polled badly so they uniformly switched to “reimagining” police reform.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16182/overthrow-the-usa

The statement “Black Lives Matter” assumes from the start that, for the police, the judicial system and everyone else, black lives do not matter. What is so conspicuous and tragic is that black lives only seem to matter if they were taken by a white person…. Sadly, when it comes to black-on-black violence, no one seems to care.

Are the politicians who claim to want help distressed communities the very ones keeping the distressed communities distressed — and in a perpetual state of reaching out to those same politicians for dangled promises of help?

The mob’s destruction or removal of statues appears an attempt to erase the history of the United States… What they are doing looks like just an old-fashioned power-grab. The first law of power-grabbers is that if no one stops them, they keep on going — often with catastrophic consequences.

The recent damage inflicted on thousands of people who lost their possessions and businesses — as well as the many murders and assaults — shows what happens to a society with fewer police or no police.

That the name Black Lives Matter is present everywhere, and that everyone seems to ignore or forget what the organization Black Lives Matter really is, shows that a violent, anti-democratic organization, which calls for the murder of police officers and accepts anti-Semitism and anti-White racism, can use threats, intimidation and destruction — and find public acceptance.

“Their disruptive and violent behavior is happening because governors, mayors, and police chiefs have over the last decade sent the message that they will not respond with mind-concentrating force in order to restore order and hold rioters accountable….” — Bruce Thornton, Professor of Classics and Humanities at California State University and research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, June 19, 2020.

On May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a police officer, Derek Chauvin, who already had 18 complaints lodged against him, killed a black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Angry protests in Minneapolis quickly turned into riots that ravaged the city. The police did not intervene; the mayor had ordered them to withdraw and do nothing.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/independence-day-and-woke-revolution-bruce-thornton/

Not since the Civil War has Independence Day been celebrated amidst such threats to our country’s political heritage. The riots and bombings of the Sixties and Seventies were more lethal and destructive, but the political consensus from the center-left to the center-right––that the democratic process rather than violence should be the agent of change––hence rejected the revolutionary narrative of the New Left.

Today, however, the recent shift of the Democrats to their progressives and Marxist wing has put the authority and power of Congressmen, Democrat Party leaders, governors, mayors, city councils, media, corporations, sports teams, and entertainment industries on the side of rioters, vandals, and looters. The outfits behind this disorder, whether the self-proclaimed Marxists of Black Lives Matter, or the juvenile anarchists of Antifa, have with near impunity added widespread violence to illiberal tactics like “cancel culture”: the vandalism of public monuments and proscription of cultural artifacts; and the shaming, silencing, and ostracizing of dissenting voices.

The alleged “crisis” of racist police targeting black males for slaughter is in fact a specious pretext for this disorder, a Reichstag Fire for justifying a revolutionary political agenda to “burn down this system and replace it,” as a BLM honcho put it recently. This legitimizing of an illiberal political ideology and violent tactics by civic, business, and cultural leaders now threatens to dismantle the Constitutional order and American civic identity of which American exceptionalism and political freedom are the fruit.

https://globaleconomicwarfare.com/2020/07/do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/

Thanks to Amil Imani….

History has a lot of “people’s revolutions” that have gone terribly bad. What starts with promises of liberty too often ends with severe oppression. That was certainly the case with the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, Nazis in Germany, Mao in China, Castro in Cuba, Chavez in Venezuela, and the Arab Spring.

Sadly, many students of history recognize too many similarities between the mob behavior of today and those tragedies of the past. The world has paid a very high price in blood and oppression.

Think about the tactics at work today. They have all been done before and produced nothing good: