RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/its-1776-all-over-again-joseph-hippolito/

As the nation prepares to celebrate the 245th anniversary of its independence, Americans face perhaps their biggest existential crisis, one reflecting the issues that led to the Revolutionary War.

That crisis extends beyond critical race theory and Covid-19 vaccination. Those issues merely reflect a far deeper crisis: the demand by the powers-that-be for Americans to think of themselves as subjects rather than citizens.

Silverton, Colo., a town with about 600 residents, provides a succinct illustration. On June 14, Mayor Shane Fuhrman unilaterally banned the Pledge of Allegiance at meetings of the town’s trustees. When 10 people and two trustees responded by rising to recite the pledge, Fuhrman threatened to expel anyone who followed suit.

“To tell members of the public they are not allowed to say the Pledge of Allegiance during public comment and threaten to have them removed … violates every single one of their First Amendment rights,” Trustee Molly Barela told Denver’s KDVR-TV.

Meanwhile, school boards planning to implement critical race theory and transgender policy face passionate resistance from parents and students across the country. In Loudoun County, Va., opposition erupted after the school board fired a physical education teacher who expressed opposition to transgender policy during a board meeting. One parent, a spokesman for a group seeking to recall the board’s members, said the board wanted to stifle the parents’ role in their children’s education.

In response, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe dismissed concerns about critical race theory as conspiracy theories.

Yet critical race theory reflects the Maoist approach to Marxist revolution, as FrontPage Magazine reported in “Beijing’s Lies Matter.” As Mao said in 1963: “The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and thrived with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people.”

Black theologian James Cone developed critical race theory while two activists and scholars, Theodore Allen and Noel Ignatiev, crystallized Marxist thought on “white supremacy” and “white privilege.” Allen and Ignatiev joined the Maoists when splits arose among American communists.

Elsewhere, influencers tell Americans to “trust the science” while demanding mass vaccination against Covid-19. Influencers even advocate “vaccine passports” to ensure compliance by holding shopping, employment and school attendance hostage. On Tuesday, the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan announced that all employees must be vaccinated by Sept. 10 or lose their jobs.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/celebrating-freedom-shadow-tyranny-bruce-thornton/

This year we celebrate our nation’s birth at a time when the foundational ideas that animated our break with England are under siege throughout our political, business, educational, and cultural institutions. The iconic preamble to the Declaration of Independence–– “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”––is under assault, and tyrannical ambition continues to undermine the infrastructure of our liberty.

We focus so frequently on that world-changing preamble that we forget the bulk of the Declaration is a detailed indictment of George III in terms that evoke Classical tyranny, which Aristotle defined as “arbitrary power . . . which is responsible to no one, and governs all alike, whether equals or betters, with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will.” The cost of that tyranny is the weakening both of political freedom limited by the tyrant’s will; and of the independence necessary for self-government and full human dignity.

The Declaration, then, contrasts unalienable rights and political freedom with their opposite, tyranny, laying the foundations of a government that by design checks the excesses of power that destroy both independence and freedom. Rather than depend, as the Left has done since the French Revolution, on the progressive improvement of human nature, the Founders believed that people are by nature driven by “passions and interests,” as Madison called them. These forces motivating human destructive action cannot be eliminated or improved either by greater knowledge or by “technicians of the soul,” as Stalin called technocratic oligarchs. Rather, political institutions must divide and balance power so that “ambition counters ambition,” preserving the freedom of all, and forestalling tyranny whether of the minority or the majority.

A century of progressive assaults on the Founders’ architecture has weakened this defense against tyranny. Power has increasingly been expanded and concentrated in the federal government and its agencies. These bureaucracies are insulated from accountability to the people, and unconstitutionally combine the three functions of government––legislative, judicial, and executive––into one institution backed by the coercive power of the state.

Hence the overweening actions of agencies such as the IRS or the EPA, both of which under the Biden administration have seen their powers and funding increase. And who can forget the feckless arrogance of the NIH and the CDC during the pandemic, as it serially revised its diktats, on everything from masks to the virus’ origins, with every shift of the political winds? Or the Small Business Administration and the USDA illegally doling out grants on the basis of race?

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/fauci-vs-the-science/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=blog-post&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=third

Dr. Anthony Fauci recently said that disagreement with him is usually just disagreement with the science. He also keeps insisting that even if the guidance from the CDC on masks is changing, “it can’t hurt” to wear masks.

But the science is in flux. For children, maybe it does hurt. In the Journal of the American Medical Association for Pediatrics, a new paper was published suggesting that the evidentiary basis for requiring children to wear masks was weak and that there was evidence that wearing masks caused children to inhale too much carbon dioxide. The normal CO2 limit is 0.04 percent. The upper safety limit is 0.2 percent. Children wearing masks were getting sometimes as much as 1.6 percent. One can only imagine how much worse it would be if it were — as the CDC initially recommended — a test done on children wearing them outdoors during athletic activities. The authors end, “We suggest that decision-makers weigh the hard evidence produced by these experimental measurements accordingly, which suggest that children should not be forced to wear face masks.” Check it out.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/07/02/remembering-that-governments-do-not-make-ideals-but-ideals-make-governments/

On July 4, Americans celebrate our Declaration of Independence, which was just as truly a striking declaration of liberty, new in the world. But today, many give less thought to the uniqueness and importance of the ideas and ideals that our country’s founding reflected than to what is on the barbecue.  

To reconnect to those issues, it would be appropriate to turn to Calvin Coolidge, the only president born on the Fourth of July (though both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the 50th anniversary of Independence Day). It is doubly appropriate because Coolidge honored the Declaration’s commitment to life and the liberty to pursue one’s happiness, subject only to the defense of others’ equal, and equally inalienable, rights, more than any of his successors. He also produced remarkable results without sacrificing our freedoms – substantially cutting tax rates, tax rolls and federal debt, while real economic growth averaged 7%, with 0.4% inflation and 3.3% unemployment, during his presidency.  

In particular, Silent Cal’s speech commemorating Independence Day’s 150th anniversary (though ironically on July 5) merits renewed attention, especially as he wrote his own speeches. Consider this abbreviated version:

We meet to celebrate the birthday of America … a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity … still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.

Enough time has elapsed to demonstrate … the value of our institutions and their dependability as rules for the regulation of human conduct and the advancement of civilization … They have met, and met successfully, the test of experience.