RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/09/missouri-v-biden-july-4-ruling-is-poetic-justice-case-of-tipple-for-the-judge/

At some point in this column, I have probably had occasion to quote these famous lines from Walter Scott’s poem “Marmion”:

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive.” 

In another, better world, I like to think, the Bidens and their protectors and puppet masters would ruefully be contemplating Scott’s admonitory observation.

In this world, however, I suspect that—until quite recently, anyway—they had smugly sided with J.R. Pope’s sly amendment to Scott’s moralizing couplet:

“But when we’ve practiced for a while 

How vastly we improve our style.”  

I note that Pope’s amusing title for his opuscule is “A Word of Encouragement.”

Many of us feel a great contradiction at the heart of the Biden phenomenon.

On the one hand, he—“Big Guy” Joe—and his entire Snopes-like family—coke-head Hunter, “Dr.” Jill, the litter of grasping, on-the-make siblings—all seem like ciphers, the veritable incarnation of Gertrude Stein’s description of Oakland, CA: “there’s no there there.”

Indeed, from this point of view, Joe’s painful mental and, increasingly, physical vacancy seems to be the objective correlative for the entire Biden enterprise. It’s as if the nasty brother of the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz suddenly came to life and occupied the White House. “If I only had a brain,” he snarls softly to himself, frightening everyone around him.

And that “as if” brings me to the extraordinary “other hand.” Joe Biden is president of the United States, still, if just barely, the most important political office in the world. Amazing. How could that be? Talk about going from zero to one!

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/07/dc_should_be_renamed_for_benedict_arnold.html

There is no doubt in my mind that if General George Washington were alive to see how the permanent political class had defiled his good name, he would raze D.C. to the ground.  “But George,” I imagine Martha pleading, “there surely are some good people in the nation’s capital who still serve the Republic.”  

“I don’t think so.  They celebrate baby murder, educate children inside brothels, tax the people to death, corruptly enrich themselves, and send the poorest to fight foreign wars for vague reasons.”

“In that case, wait here; I’ll go grab the torches.”  Martha was a patriotic and courageous first lady, who was never so insecure that she required strangers to address her as “Doctor.”

If the denizens of D.C. had even the slightest inclination toward honesty, they would rename their little swampland after Benedict Arnold, a man whose capacity for betrayal they all secretly emulate.  The filthy cesspool of narcissists and thieves rules over most of North America and a good chunk of the globe, but it is despised by pretty much anyone on the planet not making a buck from the crony Capitol-ism that fuels the whole rotten system.  

Whatever courses through the Leviathan’s veins, it stinks to high heaven.  Of course, now that cocaine has been legalized in the West Wing, who knows what kinds of other intoxicants the Leviathan is hopped up on these days?  The whole of D.C. has the twitchy personality of a boozing streetwalker bouncing back and forth from coke to ketamine.  It is little surprise that the “ruling class” refuses to close the border to fentanyl.  A whole city addicted to power and pharmaceuticals can’t welch on the same drug-dealers who fill both the campaign coffers and party stashes of the city’s most decadent deadbeats.

Speaking of fentanyl, the Drug Enforcement Administration has a public safety campaign under the catchy slogan “One Pill Can Kill,” as part of D.C.’s continuing efforts to solve real-life problems with Twitter hashtags.  One open border can kill, too, but saying that out loud is neither “politically correct” nor financially viable to an upper-crust corporate oligarchy that survives on cheap, illicit labor.  The residents of Benedict Arnold are nothing if not patent hypocrites, but it still seems incongruous for the same bureaucrats who glorify abortifacients to demonize opioids.  The Planned Parenthood priesthood spends most of its time cheering, “One pill can kill — yay!”  On the other hand, Planned Parenthood’s child-sacrificing disciples — many of whom love opioids as much as Hunter Biden does — pretend to worry about the drug epidemic killing Americans in staggering numbers.  Warnings from the same deviants whose open border policies and fixation with child dismemberment have taken more American lives than any foreign military sound sinisterly hollow.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/07/07/fareed_zakaria_to_biden_why_are_you_giving_ukraine_the_same_weapon_that_you_called_a_war_crime_if_russia_used_it.html

In an interview with President Joe Biden, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked the president why he changed his mind on providing Ukraine with cluster bombs, a weapon that his administration said would “constitute war crimes” if Russia used them.

FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST FAREED ZAKARIA GPS:  You have news today.  
 
The news is that the administration is going to provide cluster munitions to the Ukrainians. These are weapons that 100 nations ban, including some of our closest NATO allies. When there was news that the Russians might be using it, admittedly against civilians, your then-press secretary said this might be — constitute war crimes.  What made you change your mind and decide to give them these weapons?  

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/07/10/heres-how-you-know-conservatives-are-winning/

If you want a good indication that conservatives are, at long last, scoring a few actual victories these days, look at the apoplexy it’s causing those on the left.

A prime example is a piece written by Jill Lawrence, a former editor at USA Today, which posted on July 4 on MSNBC and carried the scary title: “Seeing the erosion of our freedoms makes it hard to celebrate this Fourth of July.” It is a remarkable display of fearmongering, incoherence, and illogic.

“The Supreme Court, conservative governors and gerrymandered state legislatures are racing to shrink fundamental rights and freedoms,” Lawrence writes. “The result is that tens of millions of Americans are being deprived of rights that other Americans have. The scale of the disparity is frightening and growing.”

Ok. So, how about some examples?

Well, the “marquee setback,” according to Lawrence, was the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

But wait, that ruling actually restored a right — the right of the people to decide through democratic means how the lives of unborn children should be treated. It also upheld several of the founding principles Lawrence claims are being attacked, such as the “right to life,” and “equal protection” — unless, of course, you assume that the unborn have no such rights.

Never mind that. To Lawrence, abortion is “a right so significant it was until recently a constitutional right.”

Really? This right is “so significant” that it wasn’t discovered (or, more accurately, invented) until 186 years after the Constitution was ratified?

Lawrence cites other examples of threats to what she describes as “America’s most sacred promises”:

The Supreme Court’s ruling that a web designer can’t be forced to create products that violate the basic tenants of her faith.
The Court’s decision banning the use of race in college admissions.
The fact that some states are restricting puberty blockers and sterilization procedures for gender-confused children, removing pornography from public school libraries, and forbidding teachers from “transitioning” children behind their parents’ backs.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/bidens-army-secretary-doesnt-want-2nd-gen-military-recruits-for-fear-of-a-warrior-caste/

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, who got her start as a Clinton intern, has a lot of thoughts on the military.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said she expects within weeks to begin drafting a proposal for a recruiting overhaul so sweeping that Congress might need to pass legislation to enact all of it.

Depending too much on military families could create a “warrior caste,” Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.

There are sixth and seventh-generation military families. There is a ‘warrior caste’ insofar as you have families who have fought for this country since the War of Independence. They showed up, they bled, and now they’re to be replaced by drag queens and identity politics quotas.

“The Army is strategically deploying recruiters to communities across the country based on demographics, ethnicity, race, and gender,” Wormuth had claimed in a written statement.

Here’s what that ends up looking like.

In pursuit of REDCAT quotas, a message from the United States Army Special Operations Command urges soldiers to “select the ethnic group code that includes the most accurate description of ethnic background or combination of ethnicities in their ethnic background.”

At the Virginia National Guard, past recruitment was aimed at making the Guard “match the demographics of the state within 1% of the REDCAT” and when that failed, developing a “target for underrepresented groups each FY by comparing census data” and then “if the demographics are not within the 1% target develop three (3) COAs to attain the objective by 28 February of each year.”

Rather than getting the best people or even adequately qualified people, the goal is to match the force to the census data in a completely senseless exercise so that the people they do get are 20% black, 7.2% Asian, and 0.6% American Indian, or develop a plan to get those Asians.

Wormuth claims that, “the Army is also on track to meet its directed level of 5,800 officer commissions while increasing diversity representation within the combat arms branches.”

Who needs a warrior caste when you can pick your fighters by race?

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/27086/the-politics-of-pronouns

This article is a chapter from my new book, Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier–Reality Is, scheduled for release at the end of 2023.

CHAPTER 25: The Politics of Pronouns

Globalism is a replacement ideology that seeks to reorder the world into one singular, planetary Unistate, ruled by the globalist elite themselves. The globalist war on the nation state cannot succeed without collapsing the United States of America. The long-term strategic attack plan moves America incrementally from constitutional republic to socialism to globalism to feudalism. The tactical attack plan uses psychological, informational warfare to destabilize Americans, and drive society out of objective reality into the madness of subjective reality. The primary target of globalist predators is America’s children. 

A child’s ability to test reality is a reference to his ability to identify the world of facts. It is a human psychological survival skill. When little Johnny tells his Mommy he is a bird that can fly, it is his Mommy’s responsibility to keep Johnny in objective reality, and explain to Johnny that he is a child, not a bird, and he cannot fly. If instead of objective reality, Mommy or Daddy encourages Johnny’s subjective reality, and escorts him to the top floor of their apartment building to fly, Johnny will fall to his death. Objective reality always prevails.

Objective refers to a reality that is outside of your mind (world of facts), and subjective refers to the inner reality of your mind (world of feelings). Conflict between objective reality and subjective reality generates cognitive dissonance––tension in your mind created by holding inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes. The tension is often so intolerable, it causes people to change their thoughts and behaviors to eliminate the pain. Cognitive dissonance is an important dynamic of psychological warfare.

The catastrophic consequences of encouraging children to live in subjective reality, conflicts with parental responsibilities and protections. Children are being intentionally indoctrinated to believe that objective reality does not exist. Hans Christian Anderson’s famous folktale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” published almost 200 years ago, dramatizes the difference between objective and subjective reality, and exposes why reality is the final frontier. In objective reality the emperor is naked. In subjective reality the emperor is wearing new clothes. Weaponized education tries to persuade children the emperor is wearing new clothes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/michigan-republican-sets-the-record-straight-on-hate-crime-bill-that-could-criminalize-using-wrong-pronouns/?

Michigan’s hate-crime bill is subjective and illogical and could criminalize the use of biologically accurate gender pronouns, state representative Andrew Beeler told National Review, pushing back against local supporters of the legislation who have dismissed claims that it threatens free speech.

The bill would punish speech that “intimidates another individual” with up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Democrats blamed misinformation last week after several outlets reported that the bill would criminalize the refusal to use preferred pronouns. The bill doesn’t dismiss an individual’s First Amendment right to constitutionally protected activity but does criminalize speech if a “reasonable” person feels “intimidated,” a standard state Republicans say is too vague.

“This entire bill hinges on how you define ‘intimidation,’” Beeler said. “I’ll define it the way that the bill defines it: The full definition is, ‘willful course of conduct involving repeated or continuing harassment of another individual that would cause a reasonable individual to feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened,’ etc. If you intimidate by that definition, anyone in the protected classes, you are subject to criminal prosecution and a potential felony.”

Although Michigan’s 1988 hate-crime law already makes it illegal to intimidate based on race, religion, sex, or nationality, the new bill expands protections for gender identity or expression, which it defines as “having or being perceived as having a gender-related self-identity or expression whether or not associated with an individual’s assigned sex at birth.”

A standard of reason, by which juries determine whether or not a person acted with average care and consideration, is difficult to apply when Michiganders can’t agree on basic truths about the nature of gender, Beeler said.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-affirmative-action-illusion

One byproduct of a half-century of affirmative action is that it has given many Americans the impression that blacks can’t advance without special treatment. The response to last week’s Supreme Court decision banning the use of race in college admissions suggests that even some very accomplished black professionals have internalized this belief.

Joy Reid, the MSNBC host, said in response to the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ruling that racial preferences were the only reason black people like her had access to elite schools such as Harvard. Eddie Glaude, who teaches African American studies at Princeton, said affirmative action was “the only remedy to the legacy of discrimination in admissions in American higher education” and “they’ve taken it away.” Another black academic, Jelani Cobb, wrote in The New Yorker that affirmative action “helped expand the Black middle class” and predicted that one result of the decision will be “fewer students from traditionally underrepresented minorities on college campuses.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent in the case is chock-full of similar doomsaying. The nation’s first black female Supreme Court justice presents a lengthy chronicle of racial disparities in outcomes and argues that they can be linked directly to slavery and the legacy of segregation. Ending racial preferences, she writes, ignores “the well-documented ‘intergenerational transmission of inequality’ that still plagues our citizenry” and “will delay the day that every American has an equal opportunity to thrive, regardless of race.”

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/thou-shalt-not-censor

Imagine if we learned Biden Administration officials had secretly jawboned the New York Times on trans issues. Or told baseball teams they should fly pride flags – or face antitrust hearings. Or complained to the History Channel over a documentary depicting the discovery of crude oil positively.

The First Amendment concerns would be obvious. We’d all wonder why government officials thought they could tell private companies what opinions and news to carry.

The American government is hugely powerful. Not even the biggest company can ignore a call from the White House. If the executive branch has something to say, it should do so with press conferences and open advertising – not secretly threaten the media to carry its water.

Yet when it comes to social media companies, the left has forgotten this simple fact. Instead it claims a new age of information warfare demands that the Constitution be set aside – as if propaganda campaigns haven’t always been a feature of mass media. It has forgotten the importance of an open marketplace for ideas and debate.

Now, in a lawsuit brought by two states against the federal government over social media censorship, a judge has reminded the left – and all of us – of what the First Amendment means and why it matters.

And he’s done so in the simplest, most profound possible way.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/07/misinformation-is-the-vocabulary-of-a-culture-that-has-lost-its-capacity-to-discuss-truth/

EXCERPTS

The perversion of truth is falsehood; misinformation is just the perversion of information.

In a preliminary injunction issued against the White House and federal agencies on Tuesday in Missouri v. Biden, Judge Terry Doughty eviscerated government actors for colluding with social media companies to censor users’ protected speech in the name of eliminating “misinformation.”

Doughty, as others have done, compares the government censorship to Orwell’s hypothetical “Ministry of Truth.” But Orwell’s satirical title gives the speech police too much credit: It assumes “truth” is still a functional part of their vocabulary. No, our censors speak in terms of “misinformation.”

The perversion of truth is falsehood; misinformation is just the perversion of information. Truth has a moral component; information doesn’t. Years of moral relativism have eroded our cultural understanding of “truth” as a knowable, agreed-upon concept — and in our modern world, all we’re left with is an infinite supply of information.

Truth, Discerned in Nature by Reason

For most of Western history, philosophers and laymen alike have agreed upon the existence of “truth,” as a factual concept but also as a moral one.

Today, we see factual relativism as well as moral. Not only does our prevailing social ethic tolerate individuals’ self-determination of “what’s right for me,” we’ve gone so far as to nod along when a man says he is actually a woman, lacking the philosophical footing to explain why that simply can’t be true.

To “speak your truth,” as distinct from the truth, is a moral victory to be praised according to our prevalent irrational dogma. Our cultural rejection of reason is evident in every field: Look at the deconstructionist sculptures and poetry that pass for art, or the assault on the fixed, rational rules of mathematics.

In this cultural condition, people are no longer equipped to speak in terms of truth, grounded in the divinely appointed laws of nature, discernible by human reason. Those concepts aren’t in our contemporary vocabulary.