RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-impeachment-trial-verdict-pelosi-schumer-jonathan-turley

There was a palpable sense of relief in Washington as the Trump impeachment trial came to a chaotic but final end. The verdict is in so now the vilification can begin.

Both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., immediately weaponized the verdict and demonized those who voted to acquit. While the Democrats insisted that all senators should “vote their conscience,” that only meant if their conscience supported their side. Pelosi denounced opposing senators as cowards while Schumer lashed out at them for holding an opposing view of the evidence or the process.

While groups are targeting members on both sides, our leaders should be calling for unity and civility after the trial. Instead, they are fueling the politics of division.

CNN and other media followed suit. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., denounced former President Trump and said that he could still be held accountable for any crimes, CNN hosts Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash immediately followed his speech by denouncing him as hypocritical.

There was nothing hypocritical in denouncing Trump’s conduct as “unconscionable” while also maintaining that the trial was unconstitutional. What Democratic members and commentators would not accept is that anyone could hold opposing views on these questions and not be a shill or coward.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/13/yes-acquittal-is-vindication/

A little before 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump in the long-running “Impeach Donald Trump!” show brought to you by leaky Democrats and their public-relations consortium, the corporate leftist media and Big Tech. The vote was 57 to 43, largely along party lines, wholly along ideological lines. That is, the seven Republicans who broke ranks and joined the Democrats to convict President Trump are Republicans in name only. You will want to remember who they are: 

Richard Burr from North Carolina
Bill Cassidy from Louisiana 
Susan Collins from Maine 
Lisa Murkowski from Alaska 
Mitt Romney from Utah 
Ben Sasse from Nebraska 
Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania

Some of these “Elevated Conservatives”™—Burr and Toomey, for example—have announced that they will not be running again. Here’s a prediction: none will be elected again, but that is a good thing.

Well, I think it is a good thing. But then I think that an acquittal is a vindication. I know that there are some intermittently conservative organs that disagree. They believe, or at least they say, that Trump’s acquittal does not mean he was vindicated. The proposition that Donald Trump is in the wrong is an analytic truth for them. Like the proposition “all bachelors are unmarried,” they regard it as a necessary truth. It is something inarguable. 

It is worth noting, however, that these are the same organs that couldn’t stop berating Trump—the most pro-life, pro-Israel, pro-prosperity, pro-middle class, and pro-American president in decades (maybe ever)—while he was president. And they are also the same organs that, come tomorrow, will be wringing their hands over Joe Biden’s pro-abortion, pro-China, pro-totalitarian attacks on American freedom and prosperity. They prefer whining to wielding power, I suspect, and actually seem to believe that an incompetent mannequin-like Mitt Romney is somehow more preferable as president than someone like Donald Trump. 

And poor Peggy Noonan must be really unhappy. The other day, she wrote one of her signature hand-wringing columns for the Wall Street Journal informing her readers that she did not see “how Republican senators could hear and fairly judge the accumulated evidence and vote to acquit the former president.” Those who would vote to acquit, she intoned, “are voting for a lie.” She wanted the “stiffest possible” penalties, including “banning Mr. Trump from future office.”

That touches on one of the two main reasons that the Democratic machine wheeled out their impeachment wheeze yet again. They are terrified of the voters—all those embryonic “domestic terrorists” Joe Biden’s Stasi is tracking—who, ignoring the wisdom of their betters, might actually get together and vote someone else like Donald Trump—if not the Bad Orange Man himself—into office again. That mustn’t happen. 

Convicting Trump was never in the cards, even given the wobbly, thumos-starved

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2021/02/13/american-privilege-n1425455

It is a cliché that “travel broadens,” presumably broadens the mind. It is one of the foundational assumptions of anthropology that cross-cultural research broadens our perspectives. International ethnographic research, studying people “on the ground” in their home communities, certainly provides a basis for understanding and appreciation, as well as comparison between and among different societies and cultures.

As a college student I studied for a year at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and traveled around Scotland, England, and Wales. As a professor of anthropology, supported by my university and taxpayer dollars, I had the opportunity to live and carry out research in parts of the world very different from North America. For several months each I lived and taught in universities in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in Catania, Sicily, Italy, and in Sydney, Australia. For several months, I lived and carried out research on livestock breeders in Surat, Gujarat and Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India. I lived for more than two years in the desert of Iranian Baluchistan, studying the nomadic tribe that was my kind host, and for over two years in Sardinia, Italy, studying pastoralism and local culture in highland villages, one of which graciously hosted me and my family.

In my travels, I became aware of certain American privileges. One was the security provided by being a citizen of a powerful country, a country that was respected and/or feared. I was benefitting from the many millions who had built America, and the many who had successfully fought to defend her from enemies.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/antifa-activists-smash-windows-chuck-snowballs-at-police-in-portland_3695420.html

Purported Antifa activists late Friday smashed windows and hurled snowballs at police officers after gathering downtown.

Some 30 to 50 people gathered at Director Park around 8 p.m. before marching to the Portland Police Bureau’s Central Precinct, the bureau said in an incident summary. After arriving, the group began throwing objects and yelling at officers.

When police went outside to move their cars in an effort to prevent them from being damaged, “the officers were pelted with icy snowballs by participants,” the bureau said.

Video footage captured by reporters on the ground showed the crowd initially throw snowballs at police cruisers as they drove around before hitting officers on foot. The crowd chanted, “Quit your job!”

According to reports, the crowd consisted, at least in part, of members of the far-left, anarcho-communist Antifa network. The network is vehemently against the police, frequently calling for the abolishment of police departments and jails. The crowd was shown shouting at the officers as they retreated back inside the building.

https://quillette.com/2021/02/10/unspeakable-truths-about-racial-inequality-in-america/

“I am a black American intellectual living in an age of persistent racial inequality in my country. As a black man I feel compelled to represent the interests of “my people.” (But that reference is not unambiguous!) As an intellectual, I feel that I must seek out the truth and speak such truths as I am given to know.”

EXCERPTS

Leftist critics tout the racial wealth gap. They act as if pointing to the absence of wealth in the African American community is, ipso facto, an indictment of the system—even as black Caribbean and African immigrants are starting businesses, penetrating the professions, presenting themselves at Ivy League institutions in outsize numbers, and so forth. In doing so, they behave like other immigrant groups in our nation’s past. Yes, they are immigrants, not natives. And yes, immigration can be positively selective. I acknowledge that. Still, something is dreadfully wrong when adverse patterns of behavior readily visible in the native-born black American population go without being adequately discussed—to the point that anybody daring to mention them risks being cancelled as a racist. This bluff can’t be sustained indefinitely. Despite the outcome of the recent election, I believe we are already beginning to see the collapse of this house of cards.

A second unspeakable truth: “Structural racism” isn’t an explanation, it’s an empty category

The invocation of “structural racism” in political argument is both a bluff and a bludgeon. It is a bluff in the sense that it offers an “explanation” that is not an explanation at all and, in effect, dares the listener to come back. So, for example, if someone says, “There are too many blacks in prison in the US and that’s due to structural racism,” what you’re being dared to say is, “No. Blacks are so many among criminals, and that’s why there are so many in prison. It’s their fault, not the system’s fault.” And it is a bludgeon in the sense that use of the phrase is mainly a rhetorical move. Users don’t even pretend to offer evidence-based arguments beyond citing the fact of the racial disparity itself. The “structural racism” argument seldom goes into cause and effect. Rather, it asserts shadowy causes that are never fully specified, let alone demonstrated. We are all just supposed to know that it’s the fault of something called “structural racism,” abetted by an environment of “white privilege,” furthered by an ideology of “white supremacy” that purportedly characterizes our society. It explains everything. Confronted with any racial disparity, the cause is, “structural racism.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/are_you_feeling_safer_yet.html

A liberal relative of mine said of Biden’s victory that she was overwhelmed with relief.  But she is not likely to experience the life of calm and safety she anticipates with the Democrat party having won the presidency, the Senate, and the House, not to mention control at all levels of the state she lives in: California.

To illustrate the point about safety, take New York City.  A New York Post editorial quotes New York City police commissioner Dermot Shea: “We have made staggering numbers of gun arrests, taking guns off the streets from felons, but when you look, three days later, four days later, those individuals are back on the street committing more gun violence.”

The editorial continues by saying that years of often ill conceived criminal justice reform has set up a revolving door that frees even repeat offenders almost instantly.  And “[w]orse, because everyone knows the perp will be back in the neighborhood again — and the no-bail law lets the defense know right away who has talked — witnesses are ever-harder to come by.”

Well, that’s in one Democrat-run state.  What about California?  According to Hotair.com: “Through a series of measures starting back in 2014, the state of California has made it increasingly easy for people to commit property theft and get away with it[.] … Even in cases where they do manage to catch somebody stealing, it’s too often not worth the trouble of taking them down to the station because they’ll just be released immediately without bail anyway.”  One result of this is that California businesses are shutting down for good.

This is the kind of thing that conservatives should print up and carry around with them for throw-down challenges against leftists.

I’ve long admired Rep Dan Crenshaw (R. Tex.) for the knack he has to clearly state conservative principles – and his willingness to speak out constantly about those principles. One of Trump’s problems was his inability to articulate principles. His practical instincts were good but he – along with way too many Republican politicians – allowed Democrats to win the war of words. On Friday, Crenshaw again used gift in this area with a Twitter thread that lists 22 core conservative principles that we need to fight for in this lunatic Democrat era.

Crenshaw went down in my estimation last month when he attacked Trump over the events at Capitol Hill (an attack at odds with the facts) and when he pushed back against ousting Liz Cheney from her leadership position in the House after she voted in favor of impeaching President Trump. Both of those stands looked remarkably like pandering to the Bush crowd and the Democrats. I strongly disagreed with them then and I still do now.

On Friday, though, Crenshaw published a Twitter thread (which I’m presenting below as a straight text list) that deserves respect. In it, he simply and clearly articulates principles that are the antithesis of the madness the Biden administration and the rest of the Democrat party crew are imposing on our nation:

The Conservative Guide to the Culture Wars (in no particular order):

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-equality-lost-to-equity-11613155938?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

EXCERPTS

“Yet Mr. Steele also sees “more and more blacks” pushing back against “the tribalism of race” as it collides with the “reality of freedom.” He views the Black Lives Matter movement as a desperate attempt to salvage tribalism. For all his indignation, Mr. Steele foresees a better future. “Millions of black individuals, living their lives as individuals, will take us beyond tribes and into true American citizenship. Many blacks are thriving already. Their children will do even better.”

Mr. Steele, 75, is a longstanding conservative commentator on race in America and a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. We speak over Zoom a week after President Biden signed an Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity, intended to address “entrenched disparities in our laws and public policies, and in our public and private institutions.” In his remarks at the signing, Mr. Biden seemed to suggest that his is a project aimed at reshaping American governance. “We need to make the issue of racial equity not just an issue for any one department of government,” the president said. “It has to be the business of the whole of government.”

I can almost hear Mr. Steele growl in his study in Monterey, Calif., as I read these words aloud. “This equity is a term that has no meaning,” he says, “but it’s one that gives blacks power and leverage in American life. We can throw it around at any time, and wherever it lands, it carries this stigma that somebody’s a bigot.” Its message is that there’s “inequality that needs to be addressed, to be paid off. So if you hear me using the word ‘equity,’ I’m shaking you down.”

Equity in this “new sense,” Mr. Steele says, can be understood only as “a strategy.” The president is promising to “fix America morally, and aligning himself with the strategy of black people to gain power by focusing on victimization. He’s saying, ‘America must tackle that problem and create programs that help minorities achieve equity’—whatever that may be.”

The idea of equality has been eclipsed, Mr. Steele says, in part because “it was a little too specific” and bore the baggage of the old civil-rights movement. “We fought for equality 60 years ago,” he says. It was a struggle that brought his black father and white mother together. (They married in 1944. All of her siblings abandoned her, “and never came back.”) “We won the civil-rights legislation in the ’60s,” Mr. Steele says, “and the term ‘equality’ is exhausted now. And it’s lost much of its mystique—because you can measure it.”