RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/06/16/liberal-reporter-its-the-left-that-destroyed-legitimacy-of-coronavirus-containment-measures-n2570661

The coronavirus panic is over. It’s done. Finished. And the lockdowns are done too. You can’t keep us locked up. Not anymore. Stay inside unless there’s a Black Lives Matter thing going on is what we’ve been told for two weeks. The credibility of the experts is over. The era of the experts is over. There is no pause to a pandemic, and if there are spikes of COVID cases, it’ll be because of all these demonstrations and riots that ensued following the officer-involved fatality of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police on May 25.

We were told to stay inside and keep the hospitals from being overrun. It was meant to help out the medical workers, remember? Nope. Medical workers and experts were out there supporting these protests, while the media shamed those who dared to venture outside. The old line was, “you’re all selfish bastards for going outside or wanting to reopen your business.” It quickly became “why aren’t you protesting racism, you selfish bastard?” Silence is violence with this mob. Words are violence, too.

The quick switch just adds to the notion that this virus, while contagious, really wasn’t all that bad. How could it be for the media and the Democratic Party to turn on such a dime? In New York City, Comrade Bill de Blasio’s new contact tracing edict is bound for failure; you are not to ask new COVID patients if they had attended any George Floyd demonstrations. Now, how does that make any sense? It’s just glorious to watch. Now that the Floyd unrest is dying down, these same so-called experts have revamped the panic porn machine on coronavirus and just expect us to go back inside. I can’t laugh any harder. We’re not. And there will be no second lockdown. If people die, they die. Life isn’t fair, and you can blame the medical experts for blowing up their own spot on this. We don’t have to listen to you anymore, Democratic operatives. And yes, these so-called doctors are no better than MSNBC talking heads. The nation has moved on; we’re getting back to normal. Onward we go, so please shut up.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-has-a-silent-black-majority-11592348214?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

It’s too early to know what will come of the violent protests in response to the death of George Floyd. But we do know that recent history has not been especially kind to militant efforts to advance racial equality.

The methods championed most famously by Martin Luther King Jr. culminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, two of the most consequential laws in U.S. history. By contrast, the Black Power movement that followed eventually imploded, and its most prominent leaders wound up exiled, imprisoned or victims of murderous rivalries. Whatever white sympathy the civil-rights movement had gained was quickly depleted in the aftermath of rioting in Detroit, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and other major cities.

Moreover, the heightened group identity associated with black militants, as with the Black Lives Matter movement today, was followed by a white backlash in the 1970s and ’80s, which saw the rise of the skinhead and white-power movements in the U.S.

You don’t need to read an academic paper to understand that peaceful civil-rights demonstrations have had more success than violent protests, but a Princeton scholar just published one that is well worth your time. Writing last month in the American Political Science Review, Omar Wasow, a professor of politics, described the results of a 15-year research project on the political consequences of protests.

 http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/24272/builders-and-destroyers-the-2020-battle-for

   http://goudsmit.pundicity.com http://lindagoudsmit.com

There are two kinds of people in this world – builders and destroyers. You know who you are.

Our forefathers were builders who rejected monarchy in favor of limited government and the challenge of self-rule. Our forefathers understood the difference between servitude and citizenship. They chose freedom and built a more perfect union – a government of the people, by the people, for the people. The building of the United States of America was the most successful experiment in individual freedom and prosperity the world has ever known.  

Our forefathers built America with a Constitution articulating its secular laws, and the Ten Commandments articulating its moral laws. We are a Judeo-Christian country built on the Judeo-Christian foundation of the Ten Commandments. Let’s examine them.  

Commandments 1-4 codify rules for membership in the group, they are the unifying principle of monotheism. Monotheism is at the heart of the Ten Commandments and its moral laws. Freedom and independence require self-respect, self-control, and respect for others. It is a delicate balance that requires maturity and the ability to agree to disagree.  

Commandments 5-10 codify the ethos of individualism and respect for others: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The Constitution and the Commandments define the balance between self and society, and between the individual and the group. There is no disagreement about the need for mutuality or respect for the individual.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/15/no-trump-didnt-radicalize-the-left/

Our current crisis speaks as much to the failures of the old-guard conservative movement, particularly neoconservatives, as it validates the triumph of the Left.

A new poll offers grim but realistic news about America: One-third of our fellow countrymen, including 40 percent of Republicans, say we are on the verge of a civil war. It is a dangerous time—terrifying for parents of children of any age—as the radical Left’s 50-year incursion into every American institution finally is reaping long-sought dividends with the full cooperation of the country’s academic, corporate, and media leadership as well as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president.

Political observers on the NeverTrump Right, however, have analyzed the moment and identified the culprit for the widespread mayhem and destruction: Donald Trump.

Of course.

Always eager to play the role of useful idiot, NeverTrump is blaming the president—not lawless loons on the Left or their powerful guardians occupying executive mansions and mayoral offices and C-suites across the country—for our current state of brinkmanship.

“[Trump’s] spirit of authoritarianism creates a sense of perpetual crisis among his opponents, uniting left-wingers and liberals despite their differences,” wrote Ross Douthat in the New York Times over the weekend. “His spirit of chaos, the sense that nothing is planned or under control, turns moderates and normies against him. And finally, his spirit of incompetence means that conservatives get far less out of his administration than they would from a genuine imperial president, a man of iron rather than of pasteboard.”

Now, imagine witnessing not only the rampage of the past few weeks but also all that has been unleashed over the last several years and tagging Trump as the authoritarian, chaotic, and incompetent one. (Before his diatribe against the president, Douthat admitted his “dire predictions” about Trump’s presidency have been wrong for three years in a row.)

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/should_jews_endorse_black_lives_matter.html

We are living in a maelstrom of hatred, ignorance, and virtue-signaling that is breathtaking to observe.  Jewish organizations and synagogues are marching in support of Black Lives Matter.  White people are prostrating themselves like slaves “bowing before black people and asking for forgiveness for their ‘white privilege’ and the ‘structural racism’ in the deplorable, irredeemable United States of America.”

Anyone who is appalled at these actions is beginning to wonder about the sanity of this country.

 Of particular concern is the apparent all-in capitulation by American Jewry as they engage in this feel-good liberal response.

An open letter calls on Jewish organizations to endorse Black Lives Matter.

The letter asks Jewish organizations, federations … to commit to fulfilling seven actions within three years.  They are endorsing Black Lives Matter; establishing racial justice as an organizational pillar; having a fifth of staff, senior leadership and board seats be filled by people of color; participating in anti-racist education; investing a fifth of all grants in organizations led by people of color; creating racial justice requirements for grant organizations, including ‘a commitment to replacing contracts with police departments with alternative structures of community safety’; and developing a five-year, $1.5 million ‘communal accountability’ initiative.

The letter was organized by Lindsey Newman, director of community engagement at the Jewish diversity organization Be’chol Lashon; Aaron Samuels, co-founder and COO of the black media company Blavity; and Rachel Sumekh, the founder and CEO of the hunger relief organization Swipe Out Hunger.  ‘We chose these proposals because we believe they are achievable and if put into practice would make significant inroads toward making the Jewish community anti-racist[.]’

Frankly, a burglar intent on doing well in property appropriation couldn’t ask for a better list of demands!

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/06/who-now-dares-to-confront-the-left/

“Here’s a quick question: name an institution not now in the hands of the Left? Certainly not universities, the media or public service. And don’t dare cite the police as upholders of one-rule-for-all law and order, not when they’re fining petty violators of social-distance diktats while standing idle as protesters in their tens of thousands ignore the same rules.”

“It is past time to fight back. But where do the leaders come from? Not from senior clerics. Not from the pantywaists who occupy most of the centre-right parliamentary seats; whether here, in the US or elsewhere. We are left with Trump, I believe, as in 1940, when we had only Churchill. But, ignoring the Left, have a look at the way conservative commentators constantly snipe at Trump; white-anting his standing. They can’t give him any credit without including a sanctimonious personal insult, in order to establish their own moral credentials. Talk about cutting off your nose…”

The truth is the enemy of those who practice deceit and who find their anchor not in truth but in an agenda. Whether Christian or not, a decent person wants to live in truth. Personally, I define my conservatism as falling out of my own search for truth – the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Let the chips fall where they may.

Here are some truths, among a much longer list. Admittedly, not logical or tautological, but truths in the sense that they correspond with the facts on the ground as we know them or should know them. Some abiding, some more profound than others; some specific to the moment.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/06/covid-19-and-the-problem-with-official-science/

All models are wrong but some are useful, which cannot be said of the casualties projected for a disease that has proven about as lethal as a seasonal flu. Recall that 1969’s Hong Kong flu killed an estimated one million worldwide but did not stop the Woodstock festival. Yet driven by fear and folly we have trashed an entire economy.

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.  —Lord Salisbury, 1877

The desideratum in modern governance is evidence-based policy. It is not always achieved or, as we have seen with the coronavirus panic, possible. It is far preferable, however, to policy-based evidence, which was to be found with the rushed production of new evidence that had not met the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration quality assurance processes in a desire to influence Donald Trump’s deliberations over whether to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement (as I describe in my forthcoming essay in Climate Change: The Facts 2020).

In climate science the problem appears irrevocable. Scholars like Roger Pielke Jr in his book The Honest Broker have pointed out that there is no linear relationship between science and public policy: scientific findings rarely lead to single policy conclusions. Despite this, the epistemic community in climate science seems to think that even more scary model-driven scenarios will lead policy-makers to do “the right thing”.

https://babylonbee.com/news/trump-enacts-tariffs-travel-ban-on-chaz

Trump has announced a new set of tariffs and a travel ban on CHAZ, escalating the trade war between the United States and the fledgling nation-state.

“Effective immediately, no travel to or from the foreign country of Seattle,” the president said at a press conference. “Additionally, a 25% tariff will be placed on all goods coming from CHAZ, once they start exporting things.” The president will also be cutting all diplomatic ties with the communist nation, further increasing tensions.

The tariffs aren’t expected to do much, however, as the only thing the people of CHAZ have been able to produce so far is a few beans in the community garden.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/14/class-not-race-divides-america/

Nothing is stranger in these tense days than the monotony of the inexact and non-descriptive mantra of “white privilege” and “white solidarity”—as if there is some monolithic white bloc, or as if class matters not at all.

In truth, the clingers, the deplorables, the irredeemables, and Joe Biden’s “dregs” have very little in common with those who so libel them, but superficially share supposedly omnipotent and similar skin color.

In the past, we saw such tensions among so-called whites in CNN’s reporting of the allegedly toothless rubes at Trump rallies, in the Strzok-Page text trove about Walmart’s smelly patrons, in the callous coastal disregard for the five-decade wasting away of the American industrial heartland, in the permissible elite collective disparagement of Christian evangelicals, and in the anthropological curiosity about and condescension toward such exotic, but presumably backward, Duck Dynasty and NASCAR peoples. 

As a result, we have reached the surreal point at which the nation’s privileged whites on campuses such as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, in the top echelon of politics, and the corporate and entertainment worlds, all deplore in the abstract something they call “white privilege” in others who have never really experienced it. 

Of course, whatever such a thing is, they possess it in abundance but give no hint they have any intention of giving it up other than rhetorically or through the medieval concept of hair-shirt penance and Twitter confessionals. On the other hand, they are furious that middle-class whites do not join their theatrics of bending the knee and offering abject apologies for original sins. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/the_morning_after_the_riots_end.html

There will come a morning when the protests stop, the riots end, the fires are extinguished, and insufficiently woke editors will cease to be intimidated.

The Democratic leadership will no longer wear kente cloth or take a knee.

Before us will be shopping malls littered with shards of glass and merchandise that looters couldn’t carry off. The burned-out vehicles and rubble of once-viable businesses will scar our communities.

The notion of people of color will become less meaningful as the Korean dry cleaner weeps over the ruins of his business. The Palestinian-American in Chicago looks at the liquor store he inherited from his father and wonders if he can rebuild the business.

The Asian restaurant owner whose small take-out establishment supported a family and sent two children to college will wonder where to begin again. The Mexican-American business owner will wonder why he was targeted. The black firefighter who built a sports bar that was burned to the ground will ask the same question.

The corporate directors of the smoldering manufacturing facilities will consider pulling up stakes. There are no riots in rural America. 

The injured or assassinated police, be they white, black, or any other color, will be remembered by their fellow officers and many in their communities as having been blue — the only color that mattered.