RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/26/constants-liberty-ancient-and-modern/

Benjamin Constant’s writing is as pertinent to our concerns today as it was in the immediate post-Napoleonic era.

As this most peculiar year wends its petulant and morose way to the end, I find myself returning to some signal apostles of liberty. The unrelenting static of our time can make it difficult to appreciate what those sages of yore had to say. But as we continue to quiver obediently in place, bemasked, shunning our fellows almost as assiduously as we shun common sense, I think back to some anatomists of the totalitarian impulse—George Orwell, for example, who would have been surprised to discover that his searing portrayals of tyranny have been adopted as how-to manuals by the new lobotomized Left whose maliciousness is exceeded only by its ignorance. 

I think, too, of the Swiss-born French writer Benjamin Constant, whose famous essay “The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns” (1819) is as pertinent to our concerns today as it was in the immediate post-Napoleonic era in which Constant wrote.

I first encountered Constant’s work years ago at a conference about the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, another apostle of freedom who has much to teach a culture besotted by self-appointed “experts” and insatiable purveyors of “policy.” (I recommend in particular Oakeshott’s brilliant essay “Rationalism in Politics.”)

One of the first things that struck me about Constant’s essay was its optimism (“naïveté” would not be the right word for so nuanced a thinker). With the carnage of the Napoleonic wars still fresh in Europe’s memory, Constant nonetheless assured his readers that he discerned a “uniform tendency towards peace.” The imperatives of war, he thought, must at last give way to the subtler though ultimately more efficacious imperatives of commerce. “[A]n age must come,” he argued, “in which commerce replaces war. We have reached this age.”

Tell that to the Kaiser, to Hitler and Stalin, to Mao, Pol Pot, and Ho Chi Minh, not to mention all the ayatollahs, imams, and African butchers who succeeded them!

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/24930/prove-that-you-love-me

 http://goudsmit.pundicity.com http://lindagoudsmit.com

The Christmas season has traditionally been a time for hopefulness. Families gather with hopes of joyful reunion. Christian families celebrate the birth of Christ with food, wine, laughter, gift giving, and religious services. But you don’t have to be a Christian to enjoy Christmas. The Christmas season delights us all with its music, twinkling lights, messages of peace on earth, and the holiday spirit of giving. Businesses reward their employees with company parties and bonuses. Retail shops and government offices close in observance of the holiday. Not this year.

The coronavirus has changed everything. Christmas in the time of coronavirus portends the future. The final outcome of the 2020 presidential election will determine if we celebrate Christmas past, or if Christmas present will be our Christmas future. Let me explain.

The fearmongering campaign of political medicine that deliberately terrified the American public into submission has served its purpose. Fear of COVID19 was used as the rationalization for Democrat swing states to unconstitutionally mail out millions of unsolicited ballots. We all know by now that only legislators have the constitutional authority to change election laws – not governors, not mayors, not city councilmen, and not secretaries of state.

Unverified mail-in ballots were the insurance policy used in conjunction with the massive election fraud executed by Dominion machines and Smartmatic software. Patrick Byrne, entrepreneur and tech billionaire assembled a cyber intelligence team to analyze the U.S. voting system. In a stunning December 16, 2020, Epoch Times article Byrne explains that election fraud is the secret “assassin’s mace” of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“Byrne says that stealing the national election doesn’t require cheating across the board. ‘There are six counties that you need to steal. If you steal these six counties around the country, that flips the six states they’re in, which flips the electoral college votes that come with them, which flips the nation,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to take six places and cheat like crazy there.'”

The country has been convulsed by the Democrat attempt to steal the 2020 election. But there’s more.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/nashville_a_bomb_blast_unlike_any_other_on_american_soil.html

The facts about the Christmas morning bomb in Nashville are not complicated. What is complicated is understanding who set off the bomb and why. That’s because this bombing does not match any other bombs that have exploded in the Western world.

As I said, the facts about the bomb are not complicated:

Early Christmas morning, someone parked an RV in front of the AT&T building near Second Avenue and Commerce Street in downtown Nashville.

Shortly before it exploded, the RV began playing a recording telling people to leave the area:

Note the precision of that announcement: If you can hear this recording, you are in the blast range. The person who prepared that bomb knew precisely how far the blast would carry – and how far the announcement would carry.

Nashville police, upon hearing that announcement, went door to door telling people to evacuate:

Doing so was extremely brave because there was no reason to believe that the announcement was honest. That bomb could have gone off at any minute.

At least three people ended up in the hospital. The police also announced that they’d found human remains, although they have not stated whether they were from a victim or the bomber.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-woke-see-no-eviland-nothing-but-evil-11608925768?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

It is impossible to read Mark Twain in the 21st century without being aware, each time one encounters it, of the single most unspeakable word in the English language today; a word that in Twain’s time was as common as mud and therefore completely unremarkable on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. The issue concerning the appropriateness of designating “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” in their original and unexpurgated state as assigned reading in English classes in the public schools has troubled teachers and administrators since at least the 1990s.

I am not concerned here with the question of whether the bowdlerization of these texts is defensible, a moral imperative, or an offense against literature—New South published a sanitized edition of the two books in 2011—but rather with the paradoxical character of postmodern political correctness. That character was exposed, also in 2011, when the Virginia Department of Education adopted a textbook, “Our Virginia: Past and Present” by Joy Masoff, which contained the claim that “thousands of Southern blacks fought in the Confederate ranks, including two under the command of Stonewall Jackson.” That prompted anger and indignation on the left and an advisory to teachers from the department to ignore the passage.

Yet it is a historically confirmed fact that many Southern blacks, freemen as well as slaves, fought on the side of the Confederacy, as attested to by the historian William Freehling and documented by Harvard’s Prof. John Stauffer in an essay for TheRoot.com. Even so, many Civil War historians continue to deny it for ideological reasons.

The dispute over the existence of black Confederate soldiers is a clear instance of how radical progressives, in their war on America, have been pursuing two contradictory aims at once. First, they have worked tirelessly to expose what they view as the fundamentally and indelibly racist character of America from its inception. Thus the central purpose of the “1619 Project,” conceived by Nikole Hannah-Jones and subsequently developed by the New York Times magazine: to rewrite, edit and otherwise “correct” the history of the American Republic. Second, they have sought to sanitize America’s cultural achievements and thereby satisfy the moral demands of the present time, all for the good of future generations.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/obamas_spending_christmas_in_hawaii_and_generate_the_embest_picture_everem_of_the_former_first_couple.html

It’s no surprise anymore when our ruling class travels for Christmas or any other reason that strikes their fancy, while the rest of us are told to give up family reunions, and even church services. So seeing Barack and Michelle Obama in Hawaii, able to jet around wherever their fancy takes them, enjoying their scores of millions of dollars earned from Netflix, books and other post-presidential activities is no surprise. Obviously, Barack has not reached the point he mentioned in 2010, when he said, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

I am actually grateful they took the opportunity to go kayaking and generate the picture in the tweet below, which is to my eyes the best, most revealing view of the couple ever taken.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/531543-joe-bidens-continued-russian-misinformation-defense-of-hunter-is

President-elect Joe Biden continued his campaign strategy of running from anything resembling a tough question from a reporter when attempting to leave the stage after another “press conference” on Tuesday, calling said reporter a “one-horse pony” while continuing to assert that his son, Hunter Biden, is the target of a smear campaign fueled by Russian misinformation. 

The exchange occurred between Biden and Peter Doocy, a Fox News correspondent, after the president-elect took hard-hitting questions that included: 

“Do you believe that you will have a honeymoon to get things right?”

“Are you concerned about [Trump] lingering around? I see you smiling, but I still have to ask it. And kind of a corollary to that, would you consider filing for reelection early next year to show that you’re not going to be a lame duck?”

“Has the issue of the investigation of your son come up in discussions with your team and with potential candidates about the attorney general?”  

You get the idea, in terms of tone and temperature. What was a hostile four years between the press and President Trump is now a hospitable period between the press and Biden. And, in a related story, the freewheeling press conferences of Trump randomly calling on anyone and everyone are gone, with Biden’s staff deciding who gets to ask questions and who gets boxed out indefinitely. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/ignore_the_leftist_hype_the_blackwater_pardons_were_the_right_thing_to_do.html

On December 22, President Trump issued 15 pardons. Among those pardoned were Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard. If the names are unfamiliar, you might recognize them collectively as the Blackwater private contractors. In September 2007, these former veterans ended up in a shootout in Nisour Square, Baghdad, that left 17 Iraqis dead and 20 wounded. Slatten got life in prison; the other men each got 30 years. The left would like to see them continue to rot in jail, but President Trump made the right decision to let them go.

I have to admit that, for no good reason, I did not pay too much attention at the time to the original shootout in Iraq or to the men’s railroading over the course of several years after the shootout. That’s why I was at a loss for words when a leftist friend called me to ask accusingly, “So, what do you think of your President Trump now for pardoning those mass murderers?”

That friend wasn’t the only one taking that stand. Several leftists I know on Facebook posted a New York Times article about the pardon. The following is just the title but, after reading it, you really don’t need to waste your time (and it will be wasted) reading the rest of the article:

Blackwater’s Bullets Scarred Iraqis. Trump’s Pardon Renewed the Pain: Iraqi witnesses against Blackwater guards were promised justice after a mass killing in Baghdad in 2007. ‘Today,’ one said, the bullets still in his leg, ‘they proved to me it was just theater.’

The way things roll on the left is that you can simultaneously be angry at Trump for wanting to draw down America’s military presence in Afghanistan and the rest of the world, while still accusing him of being an imperialist and lambasting him for pardoning men involved in a war Trump didn’t even support.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/24/congress-christmas-tree-bill-loaded-with-climate-ornaments/

The goodies tucked inside the COVID “relief” bill are just a down payment on future climate compromises. It might not be the Green New Deal, but close enough.

Americans on both sides of the political aisle—and politicians as divergent as President Trump and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)—are justifiably outraged at the $900 billion pork barrel spending bill disguised as COVID-19 “relief” that won congressional approval on Monday.

The president is pushing back, posting video messages that detail the bill’s giveaways to foreign countries and special interests unrelated to easing the devastating economic consequences of shutdowns ordered by Democratic and Republican governors alike. 

There is no end in sight to these punitive, costly decrees, which have done nothing to stop the spread of a virus that cannot be stopped; viruses outsmart humans almost every time and considering the sad crop of human leadership in the world right now, it’s not exactly a high wall for any pathogen to scale.

One group, however, is very pleased with this monstrosity of a bill: environmentalists. “Climate change,” just as it was for his previous boss and BFF, is a top priority in a Joe Biden Administration. Team Biden will work quickly to restore most if not all of Barack Obama’s climate change agenda, a legacy Donald Trump successfully razed.

The presumptive president promises to address the “existential threat” allegedly caused by manmade climate change; he’s regrouping Obama’s climate band, including former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, who used her agency to thwart Congress and almost single-handedly advanced Obama’s extreme climate policies, and former Secretary of State John Kerry. As Biden’s “climate czar,” Kerry, a chief negotiator on the Paris Climate deal, will fulfill Biden’s pledge to re-enter that pact.

Thanks to House Democrats and Senate Republicans, however, Biden is getting a head start on his climate change wish list. 

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/24/what-the-lockdown-leviathans-dont-get/

Sure—usually “it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” by, say, the end of November.  But Meredith Willson’s classic Holiday tune didn’t quite come true this year.

After all, here’s just a starter list of things that were either banned or restricted this holiday season: Christmas family gatherings; Christmas concerts; Christmas tree lighting ceremonies; Christmas parties; Christmas worship services; Christmas sing-alongs; Christmas season sporting events; Christmas shopping trips; and even Christmas visits with Santa. 

More broadly, nearly every conceivable social activity, aside from popping out to a grocery store to stave off starvation (or, possibly, suicide) for another week, was either banned or severely restricted this year for millions of us.

Don’t like it? Don’t worry, said the experts: If you’re feeling a mite lonely after nine months of house arrest in Papillon-like solitary confinement, just throw a rollicking Christmas “social” event in which you stare, all alone, at a computer screen on a Zoom call, as the most ruthless, repressive, imperialist regime on earth monitors everything you say, and then instantly disables your account if you dare to criticize it. (Soon, no doubt, it won’t only be the Chinese government doing the monitoring and disabling, but our own—supposing it hasn’t merged with the CCP by then).

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/christmas-message-dr-fauci-wayne-allyn-root/

This can’t be a mistake. No one can be this dumb. No one can be this clueless. Not even Democrats. Not even moronic Democratic governors. Not even nanny-state government bureaucrats like Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Fauci jasked Americans to cancel Christmas. He said, “…it’s just one of those things you’re going to have to accept.” He reported he would not even allow his own three daughters to come home for Christmas this year. He wants all Americans to “painfully” isolate. He says he and his wife will be spending the holiday alone.

I have a message for Dr Fauci: “First, not just no. HELL NO. This is America. This is a free country. If we want to celebrate Christmas, we will. If we want to go to church, we will. If we want to spend the holidays with our children, we will. We’re adults. We make our own decisions. This isn’t a nanny state. It’s not the Soviet Union. It’s not Nazi Germany. We don’t need government bureaucrats telling us what to do, how to live our lives or how to spend the holidays.

Second, you’re a typical Ivy League egghead. You’re too smart for your own good. You have IQ but clearly no emotional intelligence. And certainly no common sense.

Third, how can I see this nicely? SCREW YOU. I love my family. I love my children. I love Christmas. I don’t know you. I don’t owe you. And I don’t answer to you.”

Fauci and his crowd of moronic Democratic governors are control freaks. But no one is listening, certainly not conservatives, not Trump deplorables, not patriots and not Christians. We love Christmas. We love our families. And no one is taking that away from us. Not in America.