RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://americanmind.org/salvo/freedom-for-freedoms-sake/

Do we have a goal in mind as we begin a new global war?

“In standing up to Russia and China, are we standing up for freedom of speech and equality before the law, or for “antiracism” and “equity”? Are we mobilizing the totality of our cultural and economic might in the name of traditional nationalism and traditional religion, or of globalism and woke identity politics?”

EXCERPTS

“….. I was in a graduate school class on revolutionary film in Cold War Latin America. Images of Che and Fidel were juxtaposed against those of black civil rights protesters being fire-hosed and Bull Connor’s shepherds snarling and taking down marchers. Much time had passed, but the feeling was the same.

Eventually the intuitions became thoughts; the raw emotions took the shape of ideas. The way I saw America wasn’t how others saw it. The ideas I thought represented America were not the same ones that others held.

In the Cold War, domestic and foreign dissent over America’s role as guarantor of the postwar order of liberal internationalism overlapped like concentric circles and amplified one another. In the nineties, both voices of contention were dissembled beneath the veneer of victory and history’s “end.”

The esprit de corps and bipartisan consensus around arming and defending Ukraine is eerily reminiscent—for many of us, I suspect—of the same “consensus,” composed mostly of the two political parties and mainstream talking-head media outlets, that enabled the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and before that, the war to liberate Kosovo from the Serbs and the Serbian identity, and, before that, the first Gulf War. The heady heights of liberal internationalism, however, can easily yield to the depths of self-doubt. As much as it pains me to acknowledge the incisiveness of beatniks and hippies, the question still looms, just as urgently—if not more so—a half-century later: What are we fighting for?

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/its-ok-im-not-a-biologist-either/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

These days, questioning the efficacy of a vaccine is a nihilistic, anti-scientific assault on society itself. And yet refusing to define the meaning of “woman” — a question a peasant in the medieval world could have correctly, and straightforwardly, answered — is treated as a completely normal moment by the press. Ketanji Brown Jackson says she “not a biologist,” admitting that the definition of “woman” is physiological and not psychological, to avoid offending progressives. She, of course, knows well what a woman is. The fact that such a silly question can’t be directly answered reflects the insanity of the political moment. There is a chasm between arguing that a “society should make accommodations for transgender Americans” and “men can get pregnant,” and yet Democrats are now going with the latter.

Jackson’s answer is also a reminder that the liberals’ rock-ribbed belief in “science” often relies on reverse-engineered junk science concocted to prop up trendy new theories. Liberals are no more interested in science than anyone else. Scaremongering over GMOs, which are not only completely harmless but a lifesaving technological advancement, is anti-science. Opposing fracking, which is as safe as any other means of extracting fossil fuels, is anti-science. Please tell me more about your homeopathic organic cures, enlightened Democrat. However inconvenient it is for proponents of abortion, denying that life begins at conception — “I have a religious view that I set aside when ruling on cases,” went Jackson’s crafty answer — is also anti-science. As is the notion that a person’s perspective can determine whether something is alive or their gender. And you don’t have to be a biologist to understand why.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/judge-jacksons-curious-agnosticism-on-who-is-a-woman/

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson spent much of yesterday contradicting various progressive pieties and embracing the theoretical basis and methodological assumptions of originalism, so it seems telling that the two places where she was unable to cross the red lines of leftist ideology were in defining who a woman is and defining when human life begins. As Maddy notes, it is particularly odd for Judge Jackson to put off the question of defining a woman by saying she’s not a biologist, given that the biological answer is the easiest way of all to answer the question (one wonders how many progressive biologists would duck the question by saying it’s not a biological inquiry).

It’s also deeply ironic, given how much of the hearing was devoted to encomia to Jackson specifically as the first black woman nominated for the job. The irony runs deeper: Jackson herself repeatedly used the word “woman” in her own testimony. She told Senator Dianne Feinstein that “Roe and Casey are the settled law of the Supreme Court concerning the right to terminate a woman’s pregnancy.” When Feinstein asked her, “What it would mean to have four women serving on the Supreme Court for the first time in history?” Jackson responded:

Thank you, Senator. I think it’s extremely meaningful. One of the things that having diverse members of the court does is it provides for the opportunity for role models. Since I was nominated to this position, I have received so many notes and letters and photos from little girls around the country who tell me that they are so excited for this opportunity, and that they have thought about the law in new ways. Because I am a woman, because I am a black woman, all of those things people have said have been really meaningful to them. And we want, I think, as a country for everyone to believe that they can do things like sit on the Supreme Court. And so having meaningful numbers of women and people of color, I think matters. I also think that it — it supports public confidence in the judiciary when you have different people, because we have such a diverse society.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ketanji-brown-jackson-biden-supreme-court-pick-andrew-mccarthy

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats incessantly remind us that the historic milestone marked by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination is that she would become the Supreme Court’s first Black woman.

Yet, how historically significant can it be if she can’t say what a woman is?

For all her appeal – and in 12 grueling hours of testimony on Tuesday, Judge Jackson’s intellect and charm were on full display – the nominee is dodgy. Though a highly accomplished – indeed, a historic – woman, she testified that she can’t “provide a definition” of what a woman is.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., even tried to help, spoon-feeding her the wisdom of an iconic progressive, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that “physical differences between men and women … are enduring. The two sexes are not fungible.” But Jackson was unmoved – if there is a difference between men and women, she’s claims she is unable to discern it.

See what seven years at Harvard can do for you!

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/james-clapper-conspiracy-theorist-russiagate/

Last week, the New York Times decided that now might be a good time, amid the cacophony of war abroad and soaring inflation at home, to come clean about the Hunter Biden laptop story.

On March 16, the Times published a report on the junior Biden’s messy tax affairs in which, a full twenty-four paragraphs in, they acknowledged the authenticity of the emails and files contained on the now-infamous laptop. It is worth recalling that when the New York Post first reported on the laptop and its tawdry contents — which included, among other things, indications of kickback schemes and influence-peddling involving Hunter and his father — fifty-one former high ranking members of the US intelligence community published a letter dismissing the story as having “the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Twitter and Facebook, essentially acting as surrogates for the Biden campaign, also banned the dissemination of the Post report in the run-up to the 2020 election.

Most of the fifty-one signatories of that letter, which included former CIA directors Leon Panetta, Michael Hayden and John Brennan, had no comment when reached by the Post last week. But one of the most prominent signatories, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, told the Post there would be no apology coming from him: “Yes, I stand by the statement made AT THE TIME, and would call attention to its 5th paragraph. I think sounding such a cautionary note AT THE TIME was appropriate.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/kentanji_brown_jacksons_anticonstitutional_prochild_predator_views.html

Today was the second day of hearings on the nomination of Kentanji Brown Jackson, a person Joe Biden nominated to the Supreme Court because she’s a leftist Black woman. It revealed that she is anti-constitutional, anti-White, and has a weird fondness for child sex predators.

Democrats’ statements today boiled down to three things: (1) We are so excited that you’re a Black female. (2) Republicans are racist for daring to inquire into your credentials and views. (3) Regarding those racist questions, we would never treat a Supreme Court nominee as disrespectfully as the Republicans are treating you. (Their disgraceful treatment of Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Comey Barrett, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Bork has been memory-holed.)

The real focus was on Jackson’s disturbing views about child sexual predators, the Constitution, and race. Her answers revealed that she’s either very dumb or very dishonest.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R. Mo.) already tweeted out last week Jackson’s history of demanding and imposing lesser sentences and other punishments for people convicted of pedophilia or child pornography. His questions focused on an 18-year-old man facing ten years in prison to whom she gave a three-month sentence. The man possessed hardcore stuff:

Videos included those showing a 12-year-old male committing a sexual act, about which Hawley said. “I’m not gonna I’m not gonna read exactly what it was,” because of the graphic nature of the content. There was another video showing an 8 year old “committing a sexual act,” and still others, showing 11-year-olds, the rape of children by adult males, and “very lengthy and include numerous images, numerous views, sometimes collages, sometimes multiple victims, you see the act and progress, the government goes on to describe some of the masochistic images,” Hawley said.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/22/the-coming-disaster/

Nations change course slowly, like giant ocean liners. True disasters take a long time to unfold. If you think things look terrible now, you’re not using your imagination. The Biden Administration has only been in power for a little over a year. They got their crowbar in the door early with COVID, but we’ve barely tasted what the professional political class has in store for us.

Imagine gas at $10 a gallon, or $15. Imagine food staples so scarce you have to buy them with a ration card (displayed in a government-mandated phone app that tracks your family’s consumption). Imagine a new pandemic with a pathogen much deadlier than COVID, that actually kills a substantial number of the people it infects. Imagine an infrastructure attack that erases peoples’ bank accounts. Imagine a real, global war.

I’ve already written in support of Ukraine here, and I have been warning about the danger of a Russia-China alliance for a long time. But something about this Ukraine business rubs me the wrong way: All the people who updated their profile pictures with vaccination status to posture and to shame their friends have now updated their profile pictures again with Ukrainian flags. The mainstream media is in lockstep support. We’re bombarded with ridiculous stories about the “Ghost of Kiev” and Ukrainian farmers dismantling Russian tank columns. Last Friday, former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush visited a Ukrainian church together to lay flowers.

Something is definitely wrong here.

When we see the real establishment out in such force, it should set alarm bells off in our brains: We may not understand the nature of the lie, yet. But we can be certain they are lying to us.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/23/first-they-came-for-our-cars/

A pair of principles that drive the political left – never letting a crisis go to waste, and using prior acts of government-imposed restraints to gradually but methodically steal liberty – is taking the U.S. down a path that, if traveled too far, goes in only one direction. We trust that Western nation voters will reverse the trend before it’s too late. But first they have to recognize how the country is being manipulated.

If government authorities can shut down an economy and rob Americans of their freedom with lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates over a virus, then they can, and will, do the same for a crisis, either real or manufactured, in the future. This was a common warning over the last two years that was of course considered misinformation, disinformation, and just plain nonsense by what has become known as the laptop class.

Yet everything about it is true.

So is the charge that the hacks on the political left, making use of operative Rahm Emanuel’s dictum that “​​you never let a serious crisis go to waste” because “it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before,” are masters of exploiting unpleasant circumstances to further their agenda.

Today we have a couple of crises that have been rolled into one: the coronavirus pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Together, they have produced a proposal that requires people to surrender more of their freedom.

The International Energy Agency has introduced a 10-point plan “to ease strains and price pain” brought on by low oil supply due to the war in Ukraine. The Paris-based organization that is reliably on the left, as it isn’t explicitly right-wing, suggests “Car-free Sundays in cities,” “Alternate private car access to roads in large cities,” and “​reinforcement” of “the adoption of electric and more efficient vehicles.”

https://www.city-journal.org/how-to-respond-to-russias-ukraine-war

Charles Péguy, the Catholic poet and philosopher, once said that there was no moral complexity in a war. The bad guys were the ones doing the bombing and the good guys were the ones being bombed. That sentiment overlooks just wars in which innocent people tragically suffer and die in the course of lives being saved and humane values being preserved, but the war in Ukraine fits Péguy’s formulation. Russian president Vladimir Putin is visiting unimaginable evil upon an innocent population. The complexity lies in the American response.

Much of the analysis has been so focused on the rapidly changing news that it is often simplistic. It is true, as some proponents of a no-fly zone argue, that American and Soviet pilots engaged each other in the air during the Korean War without causing a nuclear conflict. But it is also true that only the United States possessed planes capable of long-range delivery of nuclear bombs; the Soviet Union did not develop that capacity until after the Korean War was over. It is true that a humiliating defeat or setback in Ukraine might lead to Putin’s overthrow, but few have raised the possibility that such a coup could install a more malign leader. In a situation that has launched a thousand speculations, it is vital to take the broadest possible historical and cultural view.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-jackson-hearings-so-far-are-a-rout-for-progressive-pieties/

I have no illusions about the fact that Democratic-appointed judges are almost invariably likely to all vote the same way, at least on big cases. So, my hopes for Ketanji Brown Jackson departing from the party line on the bench are slim. Even with that in mind, however, this hearing so far has been a thoroughgoing rout for progressive theories of law and politics. Jackson has repeatedly embraced interpreting the Constitution according to its original public meaning. More:

She affirmed that “the Supreme Court has established that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right” (although that doesn’t commit her to adhere to that view herself).
Asked by Chuck Grassley about Justice Stephen Breyer’s tendency to cite international law as a source for interpreting the Constitution, Jackson said that she respectfully disagreed with her former boss, and that international law should not be used to determine the meaning of the Constitution.
Asked to name a justice whose philosophy resembles her own, she could have named Breyer, but she didn’t, and declined to name one, instead pointing to her own record.
She has continued to speak movingly about the cops in her family and the role of, and need for, police.
She talked about how her experience growing up was “completely different” from her parents’ attendance of segregated schools, and she cited “how far we have come” as a sign of “the greatness of America.”
She agreed with Lindsey Graham that radical Islamist groups are still at war with us, and that the Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001 (AUMF) is still in effect.
Asked by Dianne Feinstein about “super-precedent” status for Roe v. Wade, she simply discussed the normal standards for stare decisis and declined to apply any sort of elevated status for Roe. Asked by John Cornyn, she said that she had never heard of a judge describing a case as a “super-precedent.”