RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.objectivityistheobjective.com/post/imperfect-greatness

I watched a documentary on legendary, but highly volatile NFL coach Vince Lombardi the other day. In his first meeting with the Packers, Lombardi told his players, “Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it because in the process we will catch excellence.” Lombardi brought extremely high standards to the Packers, and he demanded that his players live up to those standards because he believed that was the best way to bring out their greatness. Lombardi was loud, stubborn, and irrational at times. He had a quick temper and wore his emotions on his sleeve, but he was universally loved and revered by his players, not because he was a perfect coach, but because he believed in the greatness of his players which brought out the best in each and every one of them, turning a 1 & 13 team into five-time NFL champions. Lombardi was described as,“an imperfect man, trying to create something perfect.”

That description reminded me of our country’s founders; imperfect men who tried to create “a more perfect union.” Our founders had many personal flaws, but their ideals, their principles which became the vision and foundation of our nation were as close to perfect as possible. And even though they did not live up to those ideals in their lives, the system they created has continually moved our nation closer and closer to the perfection of their original vision. People are not perfect, but principles can be. And the founding principles of America are as close to perfect as possible. Unlike Lombardi though, modern historians judge our founders on how imperfect they were as human beings, and not on how close to perfect what they created is. 

This is the way we judge many of our political leaders. Donald Trump, like Lombardi, is a flawed man, who believed in our founders’ vision of America. Trump strived to make America great again because he believed in American greatness, and in the greatness of the American people. Time and again, he stood up for America against forces trying to tear it down, both foreign and domestic. By believing in American greatness, Trump was able to bring the best out of Americans. Prior to the pandemic, America had the lowest unemployment in 30 years, the lowest Black and Hispanic unemployment in history, and the highest wages. We had become energy independent, were winning on trade, and bringing peace to the Middle East. But like our founders, Trump has been judged on his imperfections as a person, and not on his production as President. 

https://harbingersdaily.com/disturbing-trend-the-weaponization-of-the-justice-system-to-ruin-those-with-whom-activists-disagree

The legal fight to ensure religious liberty protections for Colorado baker Jack Phillips continues after a state district judge ruled against Phillips in a case involving a request for a cake celebrating a gender transition.

Despite a favorable 2018 Supreme Court ruling for Phillips in a similar case, Colorado state District Judge A. Bruce Jones ruled Tuesday that Phillips violated the state’s anti-discrimination law when he refused on religious grounds to design a blue and pink cake to celebrate a gender transition for Autumn Scardina, a biological male who presents as female.

Jones, in his ruling Tuesday, argued Phillips’ refusal to fill Scardina’s request constituted a refusal to sell a product, not a case of compelled speech as Phillips has argued through his attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom.

In Phillips’ 2018 high court case, the justices, in a 7-2 decision, ruled that Colorado had used “clear and impermissible hostility” in prosecuting Phillips for declining to design a cake for a same-sex wedding in 2013.

But following that ruling, the state again pursued Phillips on grounds he had violated Colorado’s anti-discrimination law in refusing to comply with Scardina’s request. Scardina approached Phillips with his request on the same day in 2017 that the Supreme Court announced it would hear Phillips’ case.

Phillips countered with a lawsuit against the state, and Colorado dropped its case against him. But Scardina, a local attorney, responded with his own civil lawsuit against Phillips.

In his ruling, Jones wrote that anti-discrimination laws are intended to “ensure that members of our society who have historically been treated unfairly, who have been deprived of even the every-day right to access businesses to buy products, are no longer treated as ‘others.’”

www.dailysignal.com/2021/06/18/mysterious-origins-of-covid-19-raise-alarming-possibilities-wuhan/?

For over a year, the American establishment and media have ostracized anyone who dared to connect the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Then, suddenly and without apologies for their past demagoguery, “journalists” and “experts” conceded that the Wuhan lab may well have been the most likely genesis.

Why the abrupt change?

For one thing, Donald Trump is no longer president.

There is now no need for progressives to declare everything that Trump once asserted as truth to be a lie. That includes Trump’s insistence that the Wuhan lab, not a wet market full of sliced-up bats, was the source of the outbreak.

The recent release of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails, along with new information about the gain-of-function research by Dr. Peter Daszak, a zoologist and president of the EcoHealth Alliance, make it clear that U.S. taxpayer dollars were being funneled to the Chinese for coronavirus research in Wuhan.

So now what?

We are left with a number of lose-lose scenarios regarding China’s efforts to lie about the origins of COVID-19.

Will China continually deny what is appearing to be undeniable? Perhaps. We should remember that this is a country with a Communist Party hierarchy that once killed many millions of its own citizens under Mao Zedong, and with a current apparat that has put 1 million Muslim Uyghurs into internment camps.

A stonewalling China likely will conclude that the risk of appearing guilty for causing one of the greatest “natural” global disasters in a century is not nearly as destructive to its interests as admitting it.

Will China then wait us out, denying the obvious facts, until weary Americans move onto another of their media frenzies?

Or, could China confess that the virus was birthed in the Wuhan lab but claim its appearance was a “joint” effort with the United States? The Chinese could insist that combined efforts with the U.S. were aimed at finding a “cure” for coronavirus epidemics, and thus China should not be blamed—or at least not solely blamed.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/how-nations-slip-greatness-obscur

Men, like nations, think they’re eternal. What man in his 20s or 30s doesn’t believe, at least subconsciously, that he’ll live forever?

In the springtime of youth, an endless summer beckons. As you pass 70, it’s harder to hide from reality.

Nations too have seasons. Imagine a Roman of the 2nd. century contemplating an empire that stretched from Britain to the Near East, thinking: This will endure forever.

Forever was about 500 years, give or take.

France was the thing in the 17th and 18th centuries. Now the land of Charles Martel is on its way to becoming part of the Muslim ummah.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the sun never set on the British empire. Now Albion exists in a perpetual twilight. Its 95-year-old sovereign is a fitting symbol for a nation in terminal decline.

In the 1980s, Japan seemed poised to buy the world. Business schools taught Japanese management techniques. Today, its birth rate is so low and its population is aging so rapidly, that an industry has sprung up to remove the remains of elderly Japanese who die alone.

I was born in 1946, almost at the midpoint of the 20th century – the American century.  America’s prestige and influence were never greater. Thanks to the Greatest Generation, we won a World War fought over most of Europe, Asia and the Pacific. We reduced Germany to rubble and put the rising sun to bed.

It set the stage for almost half a century of unprecedented prosperity. We stopped the spread of communism in Europe and Asia, and fought international terrorism. We rebuilt our enemies and lavished foreign aid on much of the world.

We built skyscrapers and rockets to the moon. We conquered Polio and COVID.  We explored the mysteries of the Universe and the wonders of DNA, the blueprint  of life.

But where is the glory that once was Rome?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/so_call_me_racist.html

The worst epithet one can be called in the America of tribal identities, traveling snowflakes in search of a trigger, BLM comrades, critical race propagandists, and purportedly systemic white privilege Kens and Karens, is a racist. 

In today’s mass social milieu, if one is the wrong skin color, religion, nationality, or political party affiliate, one must be a racist.  That accounts for at least half of us.  So what’s the issue? 

Since the accusation has become so ludicrous — in that it encompasses everything from drinking pre-woke Coke to having the right math answer — it has lost its zing along with its original connotation.

So in this age of insanity, where all things are defined as the opposite of what they are supposed to mean: call me racist. 

I must be a racist because: I believe that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, regardless of original intent, has devolved into a Marxist, anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-family racist hate group.

I must be racist because: I believe that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are the same anti-Jew hatred that has existed for millennia. 

I must be racist because: I believe that while anti-Semitism exists on the far right, it is powerless and negligible as compared to the very vocal and ever-growing anti-Semitism, overtly coalescing in the Democrat-controlled U.S. House.   

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/the_collective_insanity_thats_rapidly_erasing_america.html

Many of us older than half a century no longer recognize the country we grew up in.  We have a hard time reconciling that past America with what we see happening today.  America, to our view, was predominantly a place of light, freedom, and joy.  Now, as we witness a massing storm of iniquity, we either don’t understand what we’re seeing or choke back the language to describe it because the words all sound too harsh or politically incorrect.  We look for other demons to blame such as socialism and Marxism, and while they are definitely part of the problem, what now haunts us is even darker than those malignancies.

This baleful presence has been gathering over the American landscape for some time and the pandemic provided just the right catalyst for it to become a clear and present danger.  It would now take an act of will to ignore its existence, but we still, too often, turn our faces away.

The individuals who make up the component parts of this devilry may believe that they act out of good intentions, but the sum of those parts empowers an evil system of racism, corruption, and violence.  It is an evil that is largely driven by a lust for absolute political power and complete control over the individual.  The modern world has seen this storm before, and we ignore it to our great peril.

www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/biden_to_harris_disaster_1_to_disaster_2.html

That “President” Biden is an unmitigated disaster as our chief executive is so painfully apparent to everyone that it hardly seems necessary to point it out.  Nonetheless, just briefly consider:

Catastrophic Governance

His policies — anti-energy, anti-business, anti-military, anti-America First — have wrecked the economy, driven gas to over $3.00/gallon, given us the absolute worst illegal immigration crisis in our history, and bankrupted the country. In a warped way, it’s kind of impressive that he’s done that in only a bit over four months.

Leadership Vacuum

No one believes Biden is calling the shots, He’s totally malleable to behind-the-scenes operatives, acting in a confused, unknowing fog, reading as best he can from the teleprompter, and hiding behind his weird “I’ll get in trouble if I answer any more of your questions” excuse.

Made America Weak Internationally

The ayatollahs from Iran, Russia’s Putin, and Xi Jinping of Communist China are licking their chops at the prospect of having their way with poor ‘ol Joe.

Family Corruption

Has there ever been a “First Family” with anywhere near the decades-long, indisputable record of dishonesty, financial misdealings, and outright graft that even approaches that of the Bidens?

Diminished Mental Capacity

For those among this readership who have a compromised older family member, it isn’t merely the grotesquely obvious signs of dementia that mark Biden as severely limited. It’s the more subtle behaviors that betray his overwhelming incapacity. A clear example occurred just recently when the ever-admiring and forever-excusing liberal media caught up with Biden as he was eating an ice cream cone. Breathlessly shouting out, “What flavor?” the media proceeded to float a softball his way, asking if there was any possibility that the Republicans might compromise with him on his infrastructure proposal.