EDUCATION Comments turned off

Ivy League Detention Centers The cultural illiteracy of this class is of a piece with the moral illiteracy of the jury responsible for this class. To our armories of liberty, students and jurors shrug. By Bill Asher

Posted By on September 22nd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/21/ivy-league-detention-centers/

When a 10 percent transmission rate is 150 percent higher than a college or university’s rate of admission, when it is improbable that adults will contract COVID-19 from teens but almost impossible for teens to avoid rejection from the adults (so-called) in the room—the adults who decide whom shall enter the classrooms at Harvard or Princeton or Columbia—the life of the mind is dead. 

Or, in the spirit of and to paraphrase William F. Buckley, I would rather be judged by the first 40 people in a jury pool than by the 40 people who judge applicants to Harvard College.

I would rather be a defendant in a criminal trial, free to have my lawyer examine prospective jurors, than submit my fate to a jury whose biases are no secret and whose deliberations are a sham. 

I question this jury’s ability to deliberate, except to say the jury’s silence is deliberate: that its results lack evidence, that record-low acceptance rates do not prove an incoming class is the most learned and literate and civic-minded class in the history of Harvard or Princeton or Columbia; that this class has no class, that it is a monoculture more discriminatory than the finals clubs or eating clubs of the past, proud of its hatred and unwilling to study or emulate the best of the past.

To know the consciousness of this class is to understand the power of false consciousness.

What this class fails to convince others to believe is that all other classes are unfit to lead and are too unintelligent to learn. What this class believes about itself is that it has a mandate to rule, based not on the consent of the governed, but according to the consensus of those who demand to govern everything.

This belief, the belief that a so-called meritocracy is meritorious, is a threat to freedom and democracy.

What, after all, do meritocrats know about democracy in America, or democracy, or America?

The question is rhetorical, while questions abound about this class’s fluency in the rhetoric of Americanism. That this class is not conversant in the language of Adams or Jefferson is no surprise. That this class is ignorant of the lyricism of Lincoln and deaf to the mystic chords of memory is no accident.

The cultural illiteracy of this class is of a piece with the moral illiteracy of the jury responsible for this class. 

The two are illiterate in a tangible way, for they do not revere that which they do not know to respect. 

They see places to study, not paradises to behold, for they do not admire the architecture or honor the names engraved in stone, never stopping to hold America in their hands, never reading the works of great men or walking in humility toward works of greatness, never looking to the lights inside the Memorial Rooms of Harvard’s Widener Library or the New Lights of Princeton’s Firestone Library or at the words in lights outside Columbia’s Low Memorial Library.

To these armories of liberty, students and jurors shrug.

Because of these students and jurors, a nation weeps.

EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Conspiratorial Anti-Zionism Professor David Miller and the paranoid style of politics. Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on September 22nd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/conspiratorial-anti-zionism-richard-l-cravatts/

“Anti-Semitism,” wrote Stephen Eric Bronner, author of the engaging book A Rumor About The Jews, “is the stupid answer to a serious question: How does history operate behind our backs?” For a wide range of ideological extremists, anti-Semitism is still the stupid answer for why what goes wrong with the world does go wrong. It is a philosophical world view and interpretation of history that creates conspiracies as a way of explaining the unfolding of historical events; it is a pessimistic and frantic outlook, characterized in 1964 by historian Richard Hofstadter as “the paranoid style” of politics, which shifts responsibility from the self to sinister, omnipotent others—typically and historically the Jews.

Long the thought product of cranks and fringe groups, Hofstadter’s paranoid style of politics has lately entered the mainstream of what would be considered serious and respectable academic enterprise. Witness, for instance, the ongoing controversy engulfing Professor David Miller, professor of political sociology in the School for Policy Studies at Britain’s Bristol University, who has enraged Jewish students and other external stakeholders by his vicious attacks on Zionism, Israel, and Jewish organizations in England.

In his lectures, writing, and public statements Miller has vehemently suggested that Jewish communal organizations work in tandem, behind the scenes and in a furtive and underhanded manner, to subvert the interest of British universities and government. More than that, Miller also contends that Zionism itself, which he characterizes as a “fanatical” political ideology, has as one of its primary roles to slander Islam, that Zionism, he contends, is a chief source of Islamophobia. And the shady Jewish organizations he identifies as being part of the defense and promotion of Zionism are therefore agents of this bigotry, not to mention, as he put it, that “the Zionist movement and the Israeli government are the enemy of the left, the enemy of world peace.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Greta’s Chumps Climate zeal decides an election in Norway. Bruce Bawer

Posted By on September 22nd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/gretas-chumps-bruce-bawer/

The main thing you need to know about the results of last week’s Norwegian elections is that the international media and political elites were absolutely thrilled – just like when Joe Biden won. “America is back!” they cheered in the world’s corridors of power last November. Similar sentiments greeted the news that Norway’s left-wing parties had secured a majority of parliamentary seats, ousting the conservatives.

In a time when China and Russia are saber-rattling, when the COVID lockdown has decimated economies, and when the dire process of Islamization continues in Europe, the top issue in the Norwegian election was – what else? – climate change. No surprise. The nation’s state-run media corporation – a reliable fount of leftist agitprop – has been pushing the existential-threat, time-is-running-out line for years. This time around, deluged with Greta Thunberg-style campaign rhetoric, a significant number of voters listened. Why? Partly because many Norwegians are highly susceptible to save-the-world pitches: this is, after all, the “peace nation,” which derives much of its sense of identity from brokering accords and being a founding member of the UN. But also partly because of the central role of nature in Norwegian culture.

You see, you’re not a true Norwegian unless you’re devoted to friluftsliv – life out in the open air. (The word was coined by Henrik Ibsen in 1859.) Taking walks in the mountains isn’t just a popular pastime but something more like a sacred ritual. The late Arne Næss, the country’s foremost modern philosopher (and, briefly, uncle-in-law of Diana Ross) built up his whole philosophy around the zen of mountain climbing, the importance of going outside and breathing fresh air, and the proposition that the rights of plants are equal to those of human beings. This intense attachment to nature makes Norwegians very eco-conscious, and gives them a fierce sense of custodianship of the natural world – and hence makes them the perfect suckers for the climate-change hustle.

Here’s just one example of Norwegians’ determination to do good by the environment: in no other country has a higher percentage of the population bought into the electric-car scam. Since 2016, the market share of plug-in vehicles has skyrocketed from 29.1% to 74.7%. As for those Luddites who still rely on fossil fuels, you might expect them to be charged reasonable prices at the pump, given that Norway’s biggest industry is the extraction of North Sea oil and gas. (After all, Venezuelans pay less than a penny per gallon – one of the few advantages of living in that hellhole.) But nope: owing to punitive taxes, Norwegian motorists pay the world’s second highest gasoline prices. And most accept their punishment uncomplainingly, like the repentant sinners they are.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s meeting with PM Boris Johnson is illuminating By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on September 22nd, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/bidens_meeting_with_pm_boris_johnson_is_illuminating.html

On Tuesday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson met Joe Biden at the White House. They had the usual sit-down in the room reserved for heads of state meeting the press. The substance of what they said, as best as I can tell, was pretty meaningless. What was interesting was everything other than the substance. Biden waved his ubiquitous notecards around, revealing how much he needs to be prompted; his staff ensured that no reporters could ask him questions relevant to Americans; both Biden and Boris were masked. It was a theater of the absurd.

Here’s the Daily Mail’s summary:

Joe Biden on Tuesday did not recognize any American reporters for questions during an Oval Office meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his aides cleared out journalists as they tried to query the president.

Biden did attempt to answer one shouted question from a CBS reporter about the crisis on the Southern border but his answer was unclear when White House staff shouted down reporters, covering the president’s attempt to respond as they demanded journalists leave.

‘Violence is not justified,’ Biden appeared to say but the rest of his response was not decipherable.

White House staff even interrupted Johnson as they pushed to get reporters out of the room, shouting over the British prime minister as he and Biden sat in their chairs, watching the chaotic scene unfold as aides ushered journalists out of the Oval Office.

As reporters were ushered out, CBS White House reporter Ed O’Keefe shouted a question to Biden asked about the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border. The administration is facing backlash and criticism following images of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback using whips to round up migrants or prevent them from stepping onto American soil.

But White House aides yelled ‘thank you’ and ‘let’s go’ to the press in the room, herding them out as Biden appeared to try and address the issue. Between the shouting of his aides and the president’s wearing a face mask, it was impossible to make out the majority of what Biden said.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘Wrong Way’ Biden Is Taking The Nation Wildly Off Course

Posted By on September 22nd, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/22/wrong-way-biden-is-taking-the-nation-wildly-off-course/

“Or, perhaps more appropriately, Biden is the new “Wrongway Feldman,” the fictional “Gilligan’s Island” pilot who was described as so incompetent that he once bombed his own airfield. We’ll let history decide which one he resembles most.”

If President Joe Biden’s navigating skills were any good, the southern border would be calm, inflation under control, every American safely out of Afghanistan, and COVID defeated. Instead, we are left to wonder how it is that his sense of direction can be so fabulously wrong.

At his first-ever press conference from the White House in March, a reporter asked Biden about the surge at the border, which happened to coincide with his taking office.

“The truth of the matter is, nothing has changed,” Biden, after suggesting that he’d studied the immigration charts, said. “It happens every single solitary year. There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March.

“The reason they’re coming,” he went on, “is that it’s the time they can travel with the least likelihood of dying on the way because of the heat in the desert.”

At the end of April, Biden reassured the nation that he’d flown past the problem. “Well, look, it’s way down now. We’ve now gotten control.”

Right.

ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Shooting Down Israel’s Iron Dome Democrats pull funding for missile defenses that save civilian lives.

Posted By on September 22nd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/shooting-down-israels-iron-dome-missile-defense-democrats-nancy-pelosi-11632261494?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The Democratic Party still likes to say it supports Israel. But on Tuesday House Democrats stripped from their government funding bill the $1 billion earmarked for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system. Facing a revolt from progressive lawmakers, and with limited time to avert a government shutdown, Speaker Nancy Pelosi buckled.

Democrats say the funding will be included in a defense bill later this year, and the moderates among them may fight for it another day. But why has the party been made to retreat? Iron Dome has enjoyed strong bipartisan support. It is a defensive system that shoots down in midair rockets fired by Hamas and other Iran-backed terrorist groups in the Gaza strip.

Hamas rockets are meant to kill Israeli civilians, but Iron Dome also saves Palestinian lives. When the rocket attacks are futile and Israeli casualties are prevented, there’s less domestic pressure on Israel’s political leaders to escalate their military response. Iron Dome was one big reason the Hamas rocket offensive in the spring did not provoke a costly Israeli ground invasion. The system’s deployment and improvement, with U.S. funding, also helps develop technology that can be used to defend Americans.

Democratic opposition to Iron Dome certainly isn’t motivated by fiscal responsibility. The progressives who put up a fight over the $1 billion are demanding the expenditure of trillions on the welfare state. Funding Iron Dome now would also fulfill President Biden’s promise to replenish Israel’s interceptors after the war with Hamas.

The funding was shot down because a growing number of Democrats oppose anything that would help Israel, even if it promotes peace. Supporters of Israel should take note. If Iron Dome can lose Democratic Party support, then there is nothing pro-Israel that won’t be in jeopardy in Congress.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Rescuing Afghanistan’s last Jew David Isaac

Posted By on September 22nd, 2021

https://www.jns.org/rescuing-afghanistans-last-jew/

The effort to help 62-year-old Zebulon Simantov resulted in getting out the Afghan women’s soccer team, a group of women judges, and 30 members of his neighbors’ families.

One of the most extraordinary stories of the Afghan pullout is the rescue of Afghanistan’s last Jew—Zebulon Simantov, who lived in and took care of Kabul’s synagogue. Simantov is now out of the country, although his whereabouts remain secret for his protection. His initial reluctance to be rescued ended up saving the Afghan women’s soccer team and a group of women judges. His later insistence on saving his neighbors’ families led to the rescue of 30 others, women and children.

Simantov, 62, apparently drove his rescuers crazy in the process. “The hardest thing I ever did was dealing with that guy,” said Moti Kahana, an Israeli-American businessman who led the rescue operation and told JNS that he’s dealt with many crazy people in his line of work, but Simantov is “definitely on the top of the list.”

Simantov’s personality was immaterial to his would-be rescuers. They quickly jumped onto two WhatsApp groups formed immediately after the Taliban poured into Kabul on Aug. 15. One was called “Saving Zebulon” and the other “Zebulon Simantov.”

The groups were made up mainly of Jews involved in one way or the other with Muslim countries, most of them rabbis determined to help a Jew in distress.

“You can be a funny character, but we still have to save your life,” Chabad Rabbi Mendy Chitrik told JNS. Chitrik is chairman of the Alliance of Rabbis of Islamic States, an organization serving the religious needs of Jewish communities in places where many would be surprised to learn Jews live, from Indonesia to Casablanca.

“We were in touch with Simantov for about three years, sending him matzah, asking him if he needed anything,” said Chitrik.

Shortly before Kahana became involved, Chitrik, rabbi of the Ashkenazic community in Istanbul, reached out to the Turkish government on Aug. 16. “I figured the Americans have issues, but the Turks can talk to the Taliban and get him out.” Chitrik texted Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, asking him if he could help rescue Simantov.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘The Chinese CDC Went Dark on Their U.S. Counterparts’ By Jim Geraghty

Posted By on September 22nd, 2021

http://Jim%20Geraghty%20https:/www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-chinese-cdc-went-dark-on-their-u-s-counterparts/%0d%0d

You already knew that the Chinese government was spectacularly unhelpful and secretive in the pivotal early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. You probably suspected that any book about the pandemic written by former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb was going to be insightful and illuminating.

But you probably didn’t know how Gottlieb could, in a matter of paragraphs, perfectly illustrate the culpability of the Chinese government in how COVID-19 went from a virus spreading around Wuhan to a global plague that has killed, so far, more than 4.7 million people. Page 48 of Gottlieb’s new book, Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic:

[On] January 1, CDC Director Robert Redfield emailed his Chinese counterpart, Dr. George Fu Gao, a virologist and immunologist who had served as director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention since 2017.  After receiving no response, later that day Redfield called Gao to press for more information. By January 3, the two had talked multiple times about the outbreak. The following day, on January 4, Redfield sent Gao another e-mail, again entreating for more information on the situation in Wuhan and requesting that the U.S. CDC staff be given access to the hot zone.

“I would like to offer CDC technical experts in laboratory and epidemiology of respiratory infectious diseases to assist you and China CDC in identification of this unknown and possibly novel pathogen,” Redfield wrote. Gao was emphatic that there was no person-to-person transmission and no evidence of spread within hospitals. Gao’s working theory was that the virus had been spread by contact with an animal, still unidentified, at the Huanan market. All the early cases seemed to be tied to that market. But Gao had sent Redfield a list of the first twenty-seven cases that the Chinese CDC had identified, and Redfield noticed that among them were three clusters where multiple family members were affected – a husband and wife, or a child and a parent. It seemed implausible that to Redfield that multiple members of three different families had all contracted the virus from one zoonotic exposure. Redfield told Gao he was extremely worried this was evidence of human-to-human transmission, urging Gao to look aggressively through local medical admissions for people with matching respiratory symptoms who didn’t identify the food market as a common point of contact.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Politics and the Politicization of the US Military Caren Besner

Posted By on September 22nd, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/09/politics_and_the_politicization_of_the_us_military_.html

“If there is one basic element in our Constitution, it is civilian control of the military” – Harry S. Truman

Americans traditionally have been wary of a large permanent military establishment, believing it to be a threat to democratic institutions. This attitude goes all the way back to the Founding Fathers who deliberately kept the army small, preferring to rely on local militia in case of an emergency. This was done to prevent the army from being used to repress the rights of any individual state during the long and ongoing battle over the issue of states’ rights; the echoes of which still reverberate to this very day. The past nine months’ events show how wise this attitude was.

During major conflicts, such as the Civil War and the two World Wars, the military would expand exponentially, only to revert to the size of a constabulary force when hostilities ended. This lasted until the end of the Cold War when our newly established rivalry with the Soviet Bloc compelled us to maintain a large standing military force.

All American soldiers swear the same oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Their oath is not to any political party regardless of which one currently holds the reins of power.

Career military officers occupy a unique place in American society. Ideally, they are supposed to be apolitical. They vote in elections of course, but they are not free to criticize politics openly nor to deride their Commander-in-Chief, whoever that might be. Senior officers are supposed to be promoted based on competency, efficiency, and ability, not because of loyalty to any political party.

Officers who violate these rules can be dismissed from the military. The most famous example was President Truman’s firing of General Douglas MacArthur in 1951. An open critic of the Truman administration’s handling of the Korean War, MacArthur delved into the area of foreign policy, urging the Nationalist Chinese on the island of Formosa (now Taiwan) to attack the Chinese mainland. Since this would have entailed an expansion of the war, possibly involving the Soviet Union, this was the last thing Truman wanted. MacArthur had to go.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Progressives Discover Fiscal Restraint . . . When It Comes to Israel By David Harsanyi

Posted By on September 22nd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/progressives-discover-fiscal-restraint-when-it-comes-israel/?utm_source=

Democrats have finally found some spending that they can oppose:

@ryanobles

 A little bit of drama with the Dem passage of the CR/ Debt ceiling in the House. A group of progressives have told leadership they will not vote for the bill if it includes $1b in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome. The flap has led to the Rules Committee to go into recess.

To comprehend just how much contemporary progressives detest Israel, let’s remember that the Iron Dome is a defensive weapon. It has not only saved thousands of Jewish lives from missiles attacks emanating from Islamic terror groups but countless Palestinian lives, as well. Without it, Israel would need to retaliate for strikes with devastating force and be far more proactive in fighting Hamas — and quite likely, be compelled to reinvade Gaza. And yet a faction of Democrats are willing to sink a debt-ceiling hike over our alliance with the only liberal nation in the region.