RUTHFULLY YOURS

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

In an op-ed in a recent The Wall Street Journal, Ted Van Dyk, author of Heroes, Hacks and Fools: Memoirs from the Political Inside, wrote: “The country is desperate for pragmatic problem solving and at least an attempt by leaders to collaborate across partisan and ideological lines.” It is true. People are impossibly divided, and the effect is being felt among families and friends. It is unhealthy, individually and collectively for the nation. One consequence was the choices voters had in 2020 – On the right the polarizing figure of Donald Trump, who despite his accomplishments as President, has an insatiable ego and is overly sensitive to criticism, which make him unpalatable to many conservatives. On the left, Democrats nominated Joe Biden, a 77-year-old career politician with no notable achievements, but with noticeable cognitive challenges. Was that the best a nation of 330 million people could do? Questions need to be answered: Why has reason failed? Where does fault lie? Why are we in this place? What can be done?

The fault, in my opinion, lies principally with politicians who thrive on a strategy employed by Julius Caesar, divide et impera, divide and rule, and by a media that has given up on reporting in favor of advocacy. It is easier for politicians to address the needs and wants of specific constituents than to discuss complex issues that affect us all. Such activity has led to divisive “identity politics” and away from the understanding that we are all, regardless of race, class or ethnicity, citizens of this republic and that we all have a stake in its continuance. The United States is unique among nations in that our ancestors came from every corner of the world. It is unique in its government forged out of a belief in individual freedom, a government – with its separation of powers, rule of law, and protection of private property – whose primary responsibility is to guarantee the freedoms enumerated in the Constitution. We have differences, as expected and as we should, but, as citizens of the United States, we have in common (or we should have) a reverence for this imperfect but rare nation.

Perhaps it is the cynicism that comes with age, but I believe most politicians would prefer not to solve many of the problems we face – illegal immigration, gun legislation, climate change, healthcare and abortion. One might add education and election integrity. These are perennial issues, which when left undecided serve both sides, in that they inflame noisy partisans, the driving force behind both political parties, and who further divide us.

The U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack is exhibit A. This is not a committee trying to understand what happened – Exactly what role did Mr. Trump play? Why did not advanced warnings of trouble prompt enhanced security? If this was an insurrection, why were there no firearms found on the rioters? Why did the committee not investigate the claim of New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg that “there were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capital?” Why was an unarmed woman shot and killed as she entered a Capital window? What might be done to prevent a future occurrence? Will the committee investigate the rioting during the summer of 2020, which killed 35, injured 1,500 police officers and caused $1.3 billion in property damage? From the start, the committee was established to be a partisan hit job on Mr. Trump and his supporters, not a bi-partisan voyage of discovery. Ironically, the Committee’s shaming of Mr. Trump may well backfire on Democrats who seemed to have forgotten that a viable Mr. Trump is Republican’s biggest liability and Democrat’s greatest asset.

As Michael Barone pointed out in an interview in The Wall Street Journal, it was not too long ago that “Americans expressed great trust in their institutions and great belief and confidence in their leaders.” Mr. Barone suggests Watergate was “a historical watershed” that ended that trust. But no matter its origin and whether deserved or not, disillusionment in government has harmed the United States. I recall being in the Senate dining room for lunch in the early 1970s and seeing Democrats and Republicans dining together. It’s my understanding that rarely happens today. Political partisanship has destroyed friendships and disrupted families. Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis argued in last weekend’s The Wall Street Journal that the problem is less about polarization around “fixed ideological poles” and more about hostility toward individuals. Regardless, questions remain. Why have we reached this impasse and what, if anything, can be done to end it? It seems to me that our best hope lies in education, a return to reason, traditional values and a revival of patriotism.

Amidst this anger, we appear to have forgotten that free-market capitalism, within a democratic context, has made Americans wealthier beyond the wildest imaginations of those who lived a hundred and two hundred years ago. Few young people in the U.S. appreciate the lifestyles they live compared to that of their forebearers. They have little appreciation for the political and economic systems that make their lives comfortable. Do they ever think of the magic of capitalism, that a loaf of bread can be brought to a supermarket shelf for only three dollars? It is Adam Smith’s invisible hand that guides the farmer, miller, baker, trucker and merchant to work together.

Reason has been lost as time-tested traditions and customs have collapsed. The concept of national service disappeared with the abandonment of the military draft. The Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of God Bless America (written by Irving Berlin in 1938 as a peace song) are no longer public-school rituals. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, only 22% of children today are living with two parents, both in their first marriage. Fifty-four percent are living with a single parent. Church attendance (including that at mosques and synagogues), which was 73% in 1937 when Gallup first measured it and 70% in 2000, fell to 47% in 2021.

Too many public schools are more focused on woke issues, like gender identification and “saving the planet,” than on the basics of reading and math, or simply teaching students to think independently. Apart from Luxembourg, the United States spends more money per student than any other country, yet we rank 13 out of 79 countries on the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), behind countries like Estonia and Poland. In a financial literacy test, the U.S. ranked nine of eighteen. Teachers should be embarrassed; parents should be upset, and we should all be concerned.

In the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind, which was based on the 1925 Scopes Monkey, Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow) asks, rhetorically: If we do not use our brain to reason, “why did God plague us with the capacity to think?” “What other merit have we?” We need politicians and members of the media, to treat people as adults, to approach problems, not as ideological opportunities to push preferred agendas, but as issues that need resolution. In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Immanuel Kant wrote: “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.” Politicians (and media types) appeal to emotion, especially personal vilification. Their focus should be on imparting wisdom, allowing reason to blossom. Instead, they bully opponents and the electorate into submission with emotion-ridden ideological tirades, and the press laps it up.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/06/21/tom_fitton_our_military_is_being_undermined_from_within_by_woke_racist_marxist_democrats.html

“Judicial Watch” founder Tom Fitton talks about the anti-racism training the officer corps of the U.S. military is being taught on FNC’s Tucker Carlson:

TOM FITTON: We had to sue to get the documents, and they’re mandating or pushing critical race theory training on the cadets [at West Point]. This is where our next officer corps is trained and they’re being told “whiteness” is something that is what the critical race theorists say, full of characteristics that are negative.

They suggest that blacks are still the equivalent of slaves today, and they’re pushing queer theory, which is a cousin of the Marxist critical race theory.

And so, you know, our military is being undermined from within. You know, this is the type of Marxist revolutionary language that our military was designed, during the Cold War to try to protect this nation from. And now they’re on the inside.

And, you know, this is the Biden Defense Department. Because you remember, Trump tried to slow this down and it’s now the animating force for the Biden administration, and our military’s being abused.

So, you know, you’re pointing out senators are controlling our guns, right? While ignoring the abuse of our cadets at West Point with racist theories. When you have a white cadet come in and told they’re bad people because of the color of their skin, or blacks are told they are being oppressed because of the color of their skin, that’s racism and frankly, it’s banned under the law.

There’s got to be a rescue operation for our military from this woke madness.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/06/npr_visits_a_swing_district__and_much_to_its_surprise_learns_that_voters_dont_care_about_dems_jan_6_hearings.html

“Even NPR is tiptoeing around that issue, not being able to find anyone to claim anything else. They must have tried. They came up empty. Nobody cares about the Jan. 6 sh**show while inflation is ravaging the country.”

Someone at NPR came up with the idea of finding out what voters are thinking in the swing districts, now that the Democrats’ Jan. 6 spectacular, starring Liz Cheney, is in full throttle.

Oops.

To say the least, the prim Victorian-gentlemen leftists at that award-laden outfit were in for a surprise:

Kimberly Berryman lives in the countryside outside Fredericksburg, Va., but drives 20 miles to the suburbs to do her shopping. She keeps a cooler in the trunk to keep her corn cold as she travels from store to store, trying to find the best deals on groceries.

For Berryman, it’s worlds away from the hearings about the Jan. 6 insurrection going on at the U.S. Capitol.

“I got other things to do,” she said with a laugh.

Berryman, who works with special needs students, said she was shocked and scared by the attack at the Capitol. But she said she’s more worried about price hikes and supply shortages than litigating Jan. 6.

“Just move on to something else,” she said.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/bill-barr-hits-bottom-lloyd-billingsley/

Last week, former Attorney General William Barr told the Democrats’ Jan. 6 Committee he hadn’t seen evidence of voter fraud on a scale that could have affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. In late November of 2020, Barr told reporters, “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

Before the 2020 election, voters may recall, Joe Biden openly touted “the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.” Voter fraud is a crime, but Biden’s boast failed to spark any investigation by Attorney General William Barr. The addled Biden hunkered down in a basement and scarcely campaigned at all.

For AG William Barr, the Delaware Democrat won fair and square. Barr saw no need to look for evidence of voter fraud, now available in the form of Dinesh D’Souza’s 2000 Mules.

The film used cell phone data and government surveillance tapes to document illegal vote harvesting in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Texas. In Georgia alone, the film reviewed four million minutes of drop-box video. In his deposition for the Democrats, Barr erupted in laughter.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/feds-are-fully-board-trans-train-larry-sand/

Back in March, the Biden administration celebrated the “International Transgender Day of Visibility” by extolling the virtues of the kindly sounding “gender-affirming care.” But this innocuous sounding term can be extraordinarily hazardous to the health of young people – puberty blockers, hormone therapy and “gender affirming” therapies – all irreversible – are part of the program.

This bit of insanity was followed by a major rewrite of Title IX in May, which prohibits sex discrimination and harassment in programs receiving federal funds, and now includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender. As The Federalist’s Joy Pullman explains, any establishments that accept any federal funding for food, including schools, “must also allow males who claim to be female to access female private spaces, such as showers, bathrooms, and sleeping areas.” These organizations must also follow protocols “such as requiring staff to use inaccurate pronouns to describe transgender people and allowing male staff to dress as women while on the job.”

Then on June 15, Biden furthered his descent into the child abuse abyss by signing an executive order that directs his Departments of Health and Human Services and Education to further push his “gender-affirming care” agenda, allowing treatments in children who claim gender confusion, and increase LGBTQ activism infiltration, under the guise of anti-bullying and anti-suicide programs, in public schools throughout the United States. As noted by Dr. Susan Berry, the order is specifically aimed at states that have “banned transgender medical interventions for minors, promoted parental rights, and blocked public schools from teaching concepts related to gender identity and sexuality to young children.” There are 33 states and the District of Columbia that have some legal provisions which allow minors to obtain routine health care without parental consent, while 17 states have no such provisions. In the states that do have legal provisions, it is possible for adolescents to obtain puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones under certain circumstance without parental approval.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/five-lessons-joe-biden-jimmy-carter-one-term-presidency

On the evening of July 15, 1979, Jimmy Carter gave his infamous “malaise” speech, in which he blamed Americans discouraged by soaring inflation and an energy crisis for losing confidence in our country.   

Days ago, Joe Biden gave his own malaise speech. Sitting down with an AP reporter for a rare interview, the president described the American people as “really, really down,” and repeated: “They’re really down. Their need for mental health in America has skyrocketed because people have seen everything upset.”

Like Carter, the president insisted that he wanted Americans to “be confident. Because I am confident.”

But Americans do not share Joe’s confidence, just as they did not share Carter’s. 

When consumer sentiment and small business confidence hit an all-time low – worse than when our country is in the midst of a pandemic or in a deep recession – something is terribly wrong. That’s where we are now, according to the University of Michigan and the NFIB, which track the nation’s mood. 

There are many parallels between Joe Biden’s first year and a half in office and Carter’s presidency: soaring inflation, a looming recession, international crises and an energy shortage, for starters.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/22/memo-to-the-clintons-please-go-away-and-dont-come-back/

The Clintons are back at the top of the news, claiming in recent separate interviews that we are at risk of “losing our democracy.” Of course we’re not a democracy, and shrieking about “losing” it is the Democrats’ cover for their campaign to achieve absolute and unchallenged political power in this country. And no one is more to blame for that than the Clintons.

In an interview with talk show host James Corden, a hopelessly silly man who apparently fawns over every Democrat he talks to, Bill said he believes “there’s a fair chance that we could completely lose our constitutional democracy for a couple of decades if we keep making – if we make bad decisions.” Two days later, Hillary, who said she won’t run for president in 2024, assured a Financial Times reporter that “we are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy.”

It’s become a Democratic Party talking point, and fits in neatly with the Jan. 6 show trial. The implication is that Democrats’ political opponents are authoritarians who will, well, we really don’t know how the Democrats think “democracy” will be lost. They never say. Voters are simply supposed to believe them.

This type of talk could never happen in a country where the political divide wasn’t white hot. Yet it’s where we are today, and the Clintons were central to the destruction of civil politics in the U.S. (though not to the extent that Barack Obama was, but they did set the table for him).