RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/the_cult_of_credentialism.html

I once saw a celebrated American author give a class of literature majors one of the best lessons they could learn.  He was speaking about the English language when he noticed that all of the students were busy taking notes rather than listening.  He paused and asked how many planned on being writers.  All hands went up.  He asked how many expected to be successful in their pursuit.  Most hands went up.  Then he looked them in the eye and told them that majoring in literature is not the way to do so.  The students were shocked (as were some of their professors), but the famous novelist continued.  He listed his favorite writers of the last century and noted that most had spotty educations and work experiences that had nothing to do with writing.  Prestigious college degrees and straight As, he told the students, are no substitute for creativity and life experience.  

It was interesting watching some of the reactions in that auditorium.  Surely literature majors had noticed that for every Ralph Waldo Emerson, T.S. Eliot, or John Updike with a Harvard degree, there were ten Mark Twains, Ernest Hemingways, Hunter S. Thompsons, or William Faulkners whose academic achievements were rather modest.  Still, many of the young students had gotten it in their heads that if they attended the fanciest schools and read the great works of literature with enough enthusiasm, they would one day be recognized for their own literary genius.  

Watching this episode affixed in my mind a realization that our society has forgotten how to appraise genius.  For far too many decades, we have been steadily replacing the celebration of intellectual achievement with the celebration of academic credentials.  The more esteem we have accorded to the mere obtainment of a degree, the less willing we have become to recognize worthy contributions from people without the “right” curriculum vitae.  

https://dianebederman.com/the-dilemma-over-human-behavior/

A friend of mine suggested I read the book Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger by Waller R Newell. I was flattered he thought I was so well educated.

So many books have been written about human behavior. Dichotomy – Nature/Nurture? Combination? Something else? Add a little Marx and some Nietzsche, Hobbes and Locke, and Heidegger and Rousseau and: Voilà

Except I don’t know the Voilà, any more now than I did before I opened the book. I have to admit that I got lost within the first few pages of what seemed to me to be bafflegab: truth is – it’s way above my pay grade. But the topic is fascinating: The Philosophy of Freedom. It seems to be a push-pull through time.

For me, I believe the Philosophy of Freedom comes from the Bible. If we could just all follow the Ten commandments!

But, let’s carry on.

Try this:

“In order to rescue ourselves from the dreary commercial materialism of the modern age, we must try to recollect and re-energize those latent traces of ancients in ourselves. But one apparently insurmountable obstacle stood in the way of this attempt to recapture the nobility and harmony of the ancient polis – the seemingly irrefutable triumph of the modern physics of matter in motion over the metaphysical cosmologies of the ancients.”(page 1 and 2)

Got that? Well, I get the premise.

Why do we do what we do? Have we evolved or devolved? Or is it a continuum?

While I was trying to read this missive, I remembered something I had learned years ago. Biblical in its origin.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/six-weeks-until-our-long-national-nightmare-is-over/

Americans, our long national nightmare, the Biden presidency, is almost over. First, we must endure six more weeks of damage that President Joe Biden will inflict on the American people.Biden just gave Hunter, his son who was convicted on gun and tax evasion charges, an expansive 11-year pardon, after repeatedly promising he would not engage in such familial favoritism. Biden’s lies were so egregious that at a recent White House press briefing, CNN reporter MJ Lee asked a very pertinent question, “The next time that the president says he will or won’t do something, why should the American people believe him?”

Of course, the American people should never believe Biden, for he has been lying and plagiarizing his entire political career. For example, in the 1988 presidential race, Biden was forced to withdraw his candidacy after it was discovered he repeatedly plagiarized from the speeches of British political leader Neil Kinnock, among others.

Sadly, Hunter’s pardon will be just the beginning, for over the next six weeks, Biden will undoubtedly issue more controversial pardons. Some political observers speculate Biden could pardon other family members, such as his brother James.

He could also issue preemptive pardons for people who might face an investigation from the Trump Justice Department. This list includes Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired General Mark Milley, Senator-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA) and former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney.

These pardons will only make the unpopular Biden more hated by the American people. According to a new poll by J.L. Partners, 52% of American voters believed it was “wrong” for Biden to pardon his son, while only 29% believed it was the “right” decision.

No wonder, another J.L. Partners poll, commissioned for The Daily Mail, ranked Biden as the worst American President in the last 47 years. Respondents ranked Biden worse than Jimmy Carter, a President who failed spectacularly, and Richard Nixon, a President embroiled in the Watergate scandal who was forced to resign.

https://www.jns.org/trumps-pick-for-civil-rights-can-doom-dei-racism/?utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%20

Compared to some of the choices for posts in President-elect Donald Trump’s new administration, this one isn’t likely to garner nearly the attention that some of the others have generated. Trump’s decision to name Harmeet Dhillon as assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice has already attracted some of the same kind of bitter criticism dished out to other more prominent picks as articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post have demonstrated. Still, compared to the storm of controversy surrounding his selections of people like Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense or Kash Patel to lead the FBI, Dhillon is a much smaller target.

That means she may be able to fly beneath the radar of both Democratic and Republican senators who are not Trump supporters, looking to demonstrate their unwillingness to do the incoming president’s will. Yet those who want to thwart Trump’s vows to not only “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C., but roll back the woke ideological tide inside the government and throughout the country will be making a mistake if they underestimate the importance of this nomination. Having someone like Dhillon—an ardent opponent of the left and a proven legal fighter—in charge of what is arguably the DOJ’s most prominent and influential division is as much of a game-changer as any other appointment Trump will make in the next four years.

The head of the Civil Rights Division is not a member of the Cabinet. But it will allow Dhillon to fundamentally change not only how the U.S. Department of Justice operates but also to begin the process of reversing the left’s long march through American institutions. The question of whether the pervasive influence of the divisive and inherently discriminatory teachings of critical race theory and intersectionality will continue to dominate the education system—at the college level and in K-12 schools—could well hinge on Dhillon’s determination and success. The same applies to the widespread imposition of the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) throughout society.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/13/the-lefts-assassination-lust-is-misdirected/

The hero worship for Luigi Mangione, the accused executioner of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is appalling to reasonable people. We understand, though, that on occasion Americans can have a legitimate grievance with their health insurance coverage. But the guilty parties are not corporate insurance executives. The culpable are the lawmakers and regulators in Washington who have hijacked the country’s health care industry.

Mangione, arrested Monday in Pennsylvania on fake ID and firearms charges, justified the slaying of health care insurance executives, which sent many on the left into spasms of delight.

“These parasites had it coming,” the new folk hero for elitists wrote in his manifesto. Sadly, Mangione, a son of privilege who favors the crumbling British government’s National Health Service, is not alone in his blind hatred for health insurance executives.

Former Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz, who has been publicly demonstrating her tenuous grip of reality and decency for years, has been a leader among the aggrieved. “And people wonder why we want these executives dead,” she posted on Bluesky only hours after Thompson was gunned down.

Then on Monday night on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” she said that, “along with so many other Americans,” she felt “joy, unfortunately,” at the news of Thompson’s death. She quickly tried to backtrack when she realized how malicious and deranged she sounded. But out of the abundance – or maybe the emptiness – of her heart, her mouth spoke.