RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-disintegration-of-the-aclu-james-kirchick

Think of the American Civil Liberties Union during the last two decades of the 20th century, and a certain type of person invariably comes to mind: shrewd, thick-skinned, and possessed of an unwavering—some might say irritating—commitment to principle. The men and women of the ACLU were liberals in the most honorable, but increasingly obsolescent, meaning of the term. They understood that the measure of democracy lies in the impartial application of its laws, and were prepared to defend anyone whose constitutional rights were trampled upon, irrespective of their political views or the repercussions that mounting such a defense might entail.

The archetypical ACLU figure was also often Jewish, as immortalized in the 2003 Onion story, “ACLU Defends Nazis’ Right to Burn Down ACLU Headquarters.” That joke was based upon the real-life case of National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, wherein the organization represented a group of neo-Nazis who were denied a permit to march through a Chicago suburb that was home to a significant number of Jewish Holocaust survivors. The image of Jewish ACLU attorneys defending the free speech rights of American neo-Nazis was a source of shame for some Jews but pride for many others, a testament to Jewish confidence in the institutions and values of American liberalism. No American minority had reaped more from its faith in the country’s professed commitment to pluralism and tolerance than the Jews, a gift they repaid many times over by supporting the institutions—the universities, the Democratic Party, the ACLU—which upheld them. In the same way Lenny Bruce classified Ray Charles and fruit salad as Jewish (while claiming that “Evaporated milk is goyish even if the Jews invented it”), so the ACLU was seen as scrappy, authentic, and emblematic of an underdog quality. As Bruce might have put it: the ACLU, Jewish; the McCarthyite American Jewish League Against Communism, goyish.

No one embodied that late-20th-century cultural archetype of the fiercely outspoken, intellectual, principled, and Jewish ACLU activist more than Ira Glasser. From his appointment as national executive director in 1978 until his retirement in 2001, Glasser transformed the ACLU from a mom and pop outfit into a “nationwide civil liberties powerhouse,” broadening its mandate to include issues such as sexual orientation discrimination and abortion rights. Through his ubiquitous and spirited media appearances, Glasser became the face of civil liberties in America. When Vice President George H.W. Bush campaigned to succeed his boss in 1988—and spoke like a Connecticut blueblood’s idea of a Texas hayseed—he derided his opponent Michael Dukakis as a “card-carrying member of the ACLU.” It was guys like Glasser whom Bush was trying to conjure up in the minds of the voting public.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dr-fauci-tear-off-these-masks-11617387381?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

When will it be safe to shop at a grocery store or show up at the office without wearing a mask? Sooner than most experts are willing to admit. If the coronavirus epidemic in the U.S. continues on its current trajectory, the need for masks outside particular local outbreak areas will pass in a matter of weeks.

One way to think about the problem is by analogy to seasonal influenza. Hardly anybody wears a mask in ordinary settings to protect against the flu, and no one is required to do so. The worst flu seasons of recent years saw an average of 220 deaths a day nationwide. The seven-day moving average for Covid-19 daily deaths hovers around 900, still considerably worse. But that’s a 78% reduction since January, and the trends are favorable almost everywhere in the country. When the 14-day rolling average of daily Covid deaths has come down below flu level, which may happen within the next month or two, we should adjust our thinking about the coronavirus accordingly.

Vaccination is the main reason for the sharp decline in Covid cases and deaths. Some three million shots are being administered each day, and once immunity has kicked in, the vaccinated are at negligible risk of being infected, never mind spreading infection. If you’ve been vaccinated, there’s almost no direct safety benefit—to yourself or others—of wearing a mask. You still have to do so only because immunity is invisible. The expectation or requirement of mask-wearing is impracticable to impose only on those who are vulnerable or may be dangerous.

At some point, however, herd immunity is achieved: Enough of the population is immune to make the risk of infection minimal in the population as a whole. Anthony Fauci puts the threshold for herd immunity at full vaccination of 85% of the U.S. population, including children. Since the vaccine has been authorized only for patients 16 and older and not all adults are willing to accept it, Dr. Fauci’s goal almost certainly won’t be reached for another year, if ever. The current figure is only 17% of total population.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-not-bigotry-to-tell-the-truth-about-china-11617294842?mod=opinion_featst_pos2

Does criticism of China imperil Asian-Americans? A rash of recent commentary in the wake of last month’s shootings in Atlanta that killed eight people, six of them Asian women, makes that claim. But its factual basis is doubtful.

Columbia University historian Mae Ngai wants the U.S. to “pull back from treating China as an adversary.” In the Washington Post, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and Asian-American studies professor Janelle Wong argue: “When officials express fears over China or other Asian countries, Americans immediately turn to a timeworn racial script that questions the loyalty, allegiance and belonging of 20 million Asian Americans.” Journalist Peter Beinart warns that “if America’s leaders are serious about combating anti-Asian violence” at home, “they must stop exaggerating the danger that the Chinese government poses.”

Such arguments are deeply misguided. There is no contradiction between abhorring violence against Asian-Americans and criticizing a repressive regime that squelches human rights at home and undermines liberal democracy abroad. Most Americans are capable of making this elementary distinction. They make it every day.

How we approach this issue matters. China’s authoritarian system of government, economic heft and technological prowess make it the foremost challenger to the U.S.-led international order that has underwritten global peace and prosperity for more than seven decades. At the same time, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders—some 19.3 million strong according to the Census Bureau—are America’s fastest-growing demographic group. Those who call on the U.S. to drop its criticism of China for the supposed well-being of Asian-Americans are asking Washington to enter a geopolitical boxing ring with one arm tied behind its back.

https://nypost.com/2021/04/02/suspect-who-smashed-into-barrier-at-us-capitol-identified-reports/

The driver who killed a US Capitol cop before he was gunned down by police is a Nation of Islam devotee from Indiana, according to reports and his social media.

Noah Green, 25, who may have been living in Virginia, described himself as a “Follower of Farrakhan” on his Facebook page, in reference to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Green appeared to have come on hard times from his Facebook page reviewed by The Post before his account was taken down.

“I was on the right track and everything I had planned was coming into existence. It required long hours, lots of studying, and exercise to keep me balanced while experiencing an array of concerning symptoms along the path (I believe to be side effects of drugs I was intaking unknowingly),” he wrote on March 17, signing the message Brother Noah X.

“However, the path has been thwarted, as Allah (God) has chosen me for other things. Throughout life I have set goals, attained them, set higher ones, and then been required to sacrifice those things,” he continued.

His Facebook posts were first reported by MSNBC, which read them on-air.Green allegedly slammed into a fence outside the US Capitol just after 1 p.m. Friday and struck two officers before crashing into a barricade.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/04/02/president_jim_eagle_145519.html

EXCERPT

Joe Biden ran for president promising to end the ugliness, and to work at uniting the country. He vowed repeatedly that, as president, he’d work as hard for those who voted against him as for those who supported him. In his inaugural address, he spoke evocatively about Americans not demonizing one another. Think of those who disagree with you politically as neighbors, he said, not enemies. As for his policies, unlike Trump, Biden embraced the mainstream thinking in his political party. But that positioning is proving incompatible with his desire for national “unity.” Americans are witnessing the flip side of the Trump dynamic. Biden isn’t leading, he’s following. And the Democratic Party is taking Biden to places he shouldn’t want to go.

In his first presidential news conference, Joe Biden attacked Republicans over voting rights. Democrats say they want to make it easier for all Americans to vote. God bless them for that. Republicans respond that they want to ensure that new voting procedures don’t lead to voter fraud. In a sane and civil political environment — the kind candidate Biden said he wants to restore — the nation’s two major political parties would seek the middle ground: obliterating barriers to voting, but with safeguards.

But that is neither the environment Biden inherited nor the one he is fostering. Instead, he attacked the GOP position in Georgia and other states as “pernicious,” “sick,” “un-American” — and utterly racist. “This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle,” Biden said. “I mean, this is gigantic, what they’re trying to do.”

Speaking specifically of Georgia, Biden added in an official statement the next day, “Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over.” This is a falsehood: Although the new Georgia statute does contain a goofy provision barring partisan activists from furnishing water or food to those waiting in line to vote, it neither closes the polls early nor restricts early voting. It expands early voting.

Although invoking Jim Crow was insidious, it didn’t spring from Biden’s brow: It’s a Democratic Party talking point.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/never-let-truth-get-in-the-way-of-a-good-woke-story

Last month’s Atlanta shooting spree that killed eight people helped out the left-wing media. Six victims were Asian, which let news organizations stoke alarm about white racism. If you squint hard enough, set aside the two victims who weren’t Asian, and ignore the perpetrator’s psychosis about sexual addiction, you can resell the shopworn trope about simple Trumpian intolerance.

This had been tricky when anti-Asian violence rose up the news agenda after New Year and videos repeatedly showed black thugs assaulting frail and elderly Asian victims. Keeping this key fact from viewers was straining the ingenuity of reporters, whose training is to assume that victims of racism are darker-skinned than their persecutors, not the other way around.

We reached a tragi-comic point in mid-February when ABC News reported a string of incidents, backed by video, yet left actor-producer Daniel Dae Kim unchallenged when he opined, “It is not one community against another, it’s everyone versus racism.”

But as everyone knows and honest people acknowledge, racism is not the preserve of only one race, however forcefully woke warriors squeak their countervailing prejudice. Some of them, when reluctantly acknowledging preponderantly black violence against Asians, claim that even this is really about white supremacy.

https://carolineglick.com/the-threats-american-jewry-refuses-to-face/

After being forced by Covid-19 restrictions to celebrate Passover alone last year, like their Israeli brethren, American Jews were by and large able to celebrate the Passover seder with their friends and families this year. And as in Israel, American Jewish families reveled in their deliverance from loneliness on the Jewish festival of deliverance.

But even the joy of Passover couldn’t dispel the twin storm clouds rising around the largest Jewish diaspora.

The first threat is growing Jew-hatred. American Jewish groups are good at fighting white supremacism. Unfortunately, the most dangerous external threat to Jewish life in America doesn’t come from neo-Nazis. It comes from their home base.

Along with Hindus, Jewish Americans are the most highly educated religious group in America. American Jews have long assumed that the primary source of anti-Semitism in America is ignorance and that as education levels rise, levels of anti-Semitism would decrease. Given the prevalence of anti-Semitism on university campuses, researchers at the University of Arkansas decided to check this assumption.

Publishing their findings this week in Tablet magazine, they demonstrated just how wrong this assumption has become. Contrary to what Jewish organizations have long claimed, it turns out that the more educated Americans are, the more anti-Semitic they are.

College graduates are five percent more likely to apply anti-Semitic double standards to Jews than Americans who haven’t gone to college. Holders of advanced degrees used double standards against Jews 15% more often than respondents without higher educations.

The implications are dire. Academia, American Jewry’s home turf for a century and the key to their entry into the American elite – is now hostile territory.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-4-1-us-to-go-full-venezuela-on-economic-policy

It was in 1998 — a mere 23 years ago — that Hugo Chavez first got elected President of Venezuela. From the start, his program was explicitly one of vastly increased government spending, which was supposed to make the economy grow, reduce income inequality, eliminate poverty and bring about social justice. Chavez called the social programs his “Bolivarian missions.” Among some 30 or so such “missions,” big ones included blowout spending on education, subsidized food, subsidized housing and healthcare.

In the early years, things seemed to be going swimmingly, at least if you believed the official statistics put out by Chavez’s government. Not only was there supposedly steady and mostly rapid economic growth (often over 5% per year, particularly 2004-10), but they also regularly crowed about how the redistributionist spending had greatly reduced the rate of poverty. Then, starting around 2013, it all started to fall apart. Today, eight years later, it continues to fall apart. More details on that later.

Yesterday, the Biden White House put out what they call the “American Jobs Plan.” It’s $2.3 trillion of new government spending, on top of the $1.9 trillion just passed, and several trillion more to come, all on top of a $4 trillion or so annual level of baseline federal spending. Yes, it’s blowout government spending, on the usual issues pushed by advocacy groups, which supposedly will shortly achieve all the usual promises of the left: economic growth, increased economic fairness, and social justice. In other words, it’s the Venezuela economic program, blown up to U.S. scale and then tweaked a little here and there to buy off the squeaky wheels of the moment.

As I pointed out in a post on March 8 addressing the previous $1.9 trillion (“Could This Be The Very Worst Piece Of Legislation Ever?”), that bill was touted as “Covid-19 Relief,” but in fact only about 5% of the spending was for anything that could be called actual public health measures related to the pandemic. The rest was “a grand orgy of vote buying and giveaways to left-wing interest groups.” Following the same playbook, this $2.3 trillion monster calls itself an “infrastructure” plan: