RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/the-left/mind-your-language-lefties/

There is a push by some of the less insane lefties in the US to get the Democrats to talk normally, like the rest of humanity, instead of in their progressive pidgin patois.  According to a liberal (i.e. leftist) think-tank calling itself The Third Way, Democrats “who wish to stop Donald Trump and MAGA” should first stop using “words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying”.

So, it’s out with terms like “birthing person” and “LGBTQIA+” and it’s in with words like mother and gay or homosexual.  Out, also, go the lazy, dismissive labels and clichéd epithets which the more highly strung reaches of the Left use for people of differing political opinions, terms such as ‘cookers’, ‘anti-vaxxers’ (of course), the go-to slur of ‘far right’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’ (who are often further vilified by the adjective ‘fringe’ and sometimes additionally dirtied by a second adjective making them ‘dangerous fringe conspiracy theorists’).

Calling everyone who marches for curbs to immigration an evil Nazi white-supremacist, which I’m sure we can all agree is a deeply original and compelling political critique the likes of which nobody has heard for at least ten, oh even twenty, seconds, may actually be a little overwrought and not all that conducive to halting the steady stream of sensible Democrats who are deserting their political home.

The words and phrases to be exiled from leftist discourse are classed under six categories:  Therapy-speak, Seminar Room Language, Organizer Jargon, Gender/Orientation Correctness, The Shifting Language of Racial Constructs and Explaining Away Crime.

The following examples give a flavour of just how far the linguistic gangrene has spread in the progressive patient and which The Third Way wishes to excise (my suggestions about what these terms really mean are added in italics):

♦ incarcerated people [criminals]

♦ justice-involved individuals [ditto, for example the repeat offender Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr., with at least fourteen prior arrests, who offed the Ukrainian lass on the train was a justice-involved individual].

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jul/15/history-shows-tyrants-iran-russia-china-respond-decisive-force-empty/

“You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.”

That aphorism, attributed to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, has always struck me as more hopeful than convincing.

Americans didn’t make peace with the Nazis. We made peace with those we permitted to hold power in Germany after we decisively defeated the Nazis.

Today, there is no conceivable way that Israel can make peace with Hamas, a military wing of the Muslim Brotherhood and a Tehran-backed terrorist organization committed to jihad, the annihilation of Israel and the genocide of Israelis.

Since Hamas’ invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, its strategy has been Leninist: “The worse, the better,” meaning the more that Gaza Strip residents suffered, the worse it would be for Israel and the better for Hamas.

The terrorists understood the animus toward Israel of United Nations officials, faux human rights organizations, leftists in the media and radical activists on campuses.

Hamas gave Gaza residents a choice: “Conquest or martyrdom!” Those preferring a third option were out of luck.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has long been Hamas’ most important backer.

He sees himself as a revolutionary and a jihadi. He claims to be the “deputy” on earth to Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi, a messianic figure in Shiite Islam.

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/middle-east/the-wests-metaphysical-blind-spot/

In the wake of Israel’s pre-emptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and the wider war that erupted just two weeks ago—a revealing fracture has split the American and the Australian right. Some of its loudest voices—Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and an army of self-styled realists—now openly question Israel’s actions and America’s commitment to its ally.

Their scepticism, on the surface, is understandable. Decades of American misadventures abroad have left voters instinctively wary of foreign entanglements. But beneath this wariness lies a deeper blind spot that cripples the West’s ability to deal with regimes like Iran: modern Westerners have forgotten what it means to wage politics according to an uncompromising metaphysic.

Iran sits on one of the world’s greatest oil reserves. Its people are literate, resourceful, and capable of great cultural and technological feats. Yet it remains an economic backwater—poor, unstable, and brutal. For the Western materialist mind, this defies reason. Surely, if the regime wanted prosperity, it could have it.

But that is precisely the point: it does not. The Iranian state is not an ordinary government seeking wealth or security. It is an eschatological machine—an empire run by clerics whose sole claim to legitimacy is their absolute commitment to an idea: the destruction of Israel and, in time, the humiliation of the West.

This is not rhetoric for domestic consumption alone; it is the regime’s raison d’être. Westerners, whose secular technocracies run on the premise that all problems can be traded or regulated away, cannot comprehend this. They see a nuclear deal here, a sanctions relief there, and imagine they are negotiating with rational actors who prize prosperity above purpose.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/23/regime-change-in-iran-can-only-come-from-within/

The spectre of ‘regime change’ in Tehran seems to be haunting the Israel-Iran war. Even more so after US president Donald Trump followed up America’s bombing raid on three Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday with the following social-media post: ‘It’s not politically correct to use the term, “regime change”, but if the current Iranian regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a regime change?’

Trump’s post itself is ambiguous – it’s not clear who or what exactly might change the regime or when it might happen. Today, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to clear up any misunderstanding, claiming Trump was simply asking, ‘why shouldn’t the Iranian people rise up against this brutal terrorist regime?’. Moreover, Trump’s cabinet, including some of its more hawkish members, has been keen to emphasise that regime change in Iran is not the US’s objective. Defence secretary Pete Hegseth said Sunday’s ‘precision operation’ specifically targeted Iran’s nuclear programme and ‘was not and has not been about regime change’. Vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio have also been at pains to insist that the US is not looking to enter a full-scale war with Iran.

But if we’re to take Trump’s vague post to mean what his constantly hyperventilating critics say it does – that the US is contemplating carrying out regime change itself – then that would indeed be a dangerous, reckless move. The US’s raid was, itself, not without huge risk. For all the talk of ‘precision’ strikes, they could well embroil America in this war. While Israel is right to fight back against Iran’s very real aggression, sucking in the global hegemon risks broadening the conflict. Even so, the US pursuing regime change would be a truly spectacular folly. Which we can only hope isn’t being countenanced.

https://www.thefp.com/p/what-happens-if-irans-regime-collapses

Trump says it’s time to Make Iran Great Again. But what’s more likely if the mullahs fall: democracy or anarchy?

A lot has changed in the past 48 hours of this war.

Before American B-2 bombers struck Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz, the message from the White House was that regime change was off the table. Indeed, the chatter out of Washington and Jerusalem was that the White House was spooked by some of Israel’s messaging.

Defense minister Israel Katz instructed the military to destabilize Iran’s regime and threatened that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “can no longer be permitted to exist” after an Iranian missile hit the Soroka Medical Center in the southern part of the country. Indeed, the operation’s name, “Rising Lion,” is a not-so-subtle nod to the Iranian flag under the Peacock dynasty, which ruled Iran until the Shah was ousted in the Islamic revolution in 1979. The son of the late Shah, Reza Pahlavi, is now calling for a national rebellion. “The Islamic Republic has come to its end and is collapsing. What has begun is irreversible,” he said in a video message from the United States, where he has lived since 1979.

Now, 10 days into the war Israel began against Iran’s nuclear program—the prospect of a regime collapse is very real. President Donald Trump on Sunday evening floated the idea in a post on Truth Social: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”

This kind of talk has gone out of favor in Washington in recent years. The fall of dictatorships in Libya and Iraq led to confessional sectarian war. The fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt led briefly to a Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo before a military coup. But in Iran, a country that has experienced democratic uprisings five times since 2017, it now seems like a real possibility.