EDUCATION Comments turned off

President Trump’s ‘1776 Commission’ on Patriotic Education Is an Overdue Effort

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

ttps://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/trump-1776-commission-patriotic-education-worthy-cause/

America’s proud history is worth defending, and it is worth defending through government and politics. There are fair arguments about how best to go about that task consistently with a duly conservative skepticism about the proper powers of federal and local government, but conservatives should not shy away from conserving the core of our national history, ideals, and culture — a goal that not so long ago was neither partisan nor ideological.

The current lines of battle are joined around the teaching of the New York Times 1619 Project, Howard Zinn’s 1980 screed A People’s History of the United States, and other fact-challenged efforts to supplant the story of America, its ideals, and its exceptional history with critical-race and gender theory and leftist agitprop. It is wrong to fill the heads of children with falsehoods, or to subject them to outside-the-mainstream theories until they are old enough to learn to evaluate them critically. It is right and important to commemorate what makes this nation great and special.

Control of public-school curricula is properly a local matter, but presidents can provide moral leadership, start national conversations, and raise alarms in this area. So long as there is a federal Department of Education with its hands in school curricula, its actions, too, should aim to be constructive rather than destructive. A proper American history does not mean feeding children Parson Weems’s whitewashed just-so stories. It is, rather, what Ronald Reagan called for in his Farewell Address in 1989, an “informed patriotism”:

An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? . . . We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile. . . . Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual.

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Against the 1619 Curriculum By Stanley Kurtz

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/10/05/against-the-1619-curriculum/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

Choice and local control remain the best defenses.

It has been a year since the New York Times kicked off a national controversy by devoting an issue of its Sunday magazine to the 1619 Project, a factually flawed effort to portray all of American history as little more than the product of slavery and racism. Since then, our country has been convulsed by a cultural revolution dedicated to the proposition that America is a systemically racist country. This is no coincidence.

In the wake of the death in May of a black man named George Floyd from what gives every indication of having been mistreatment while in police custody, mass protests against allegedly endemic police racism spread across the country. Those protests soon devolved into rioting, looting, and — especially in Portland — daily violence in behalf of vaguely defined revolutionary goals. All of this has occurred despite extensive evidence that claims of “systemically” racist mistreatment of blacks by police are false.

Amid a national wave of monument destruction set off by the George Floyd disturbances, Portland rioters tore down a statue of George Washington, tagging it with graffiti such as “White Fragility,” “F*** Cops,” and “1619.” When Charles Kesler of the Claremont Institute responded by dubbing the disorders “the 1619 riots,” Nikole Hannah-Jones, organizer and lead essayist of the 1619 Project, tweeted that “it would be an honor” to have the statue-toppling and riots so named.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

U.S. Household Net Worth Spikes, Surpassing Pre-Pandemic Peak

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-s-household-net-worth-spikes-surpassing-pre-pandemic-peak/

Household net worth increased by $7.6 trillion in the second quarter, surpassing the pre-pandemic high as rebounding stocks bolstered Americans’ wealth, a Federal Reserve report revealed on Monday.

Household net worth increased 6.8 percent to $119 trillion, the largest gain in quarterly records dating back to 1952. Federal government borrowing spiked as lawmakers passed fiscal relief measures, according to the report.

Household net worth saw a record decline in the first quarter as the coronavirus pandemic and shutdowns pushed the economy into a recession. Increasing household net worth is one sign of the nation’s uneven recovery.

While the labor market has continued to struggle, the value of equities increased by $5.7 trillion over the first quarter and real estate grew by $458 billion. The S&P 500 matched pre-pandemic levels in mid-August and has since set new highs.

For the first time in at least four years, consumer credit not including mortgage debt fell in the second quarter. Credit decreased $69 billion as consumers did less credit-card borrowing in light of the pandemic.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Transition Integrity Project Founder Calls For EXECUTION Of Former Trump Official

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://thenationalpulse.com/news/transition-integrity-project-execution/

Gilman, who serves as Vice President of Programs at the Chinese Communist Party-linked Berggruen Institute, took to Twitter to express his desire that Anton be executed in the same fashion as Robert Brasillach.

NILS GILMAN, THE FOUNDER OF THE SO-CALLED “BIPARTISAN” TRANSITION INTEGRITY PROJECT, CALLED FOR THE EXECUTION OF FORMER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIAL MICHAEL ANTON IN LIGHT OF ANTON WRITING CRITICALLY ABOUT THE GROUP’S EFFORTS TO STEAL THE 2020 ELECTION AND SECURE A VICTORY FOR DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE JOE BIDEN.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Let’s take another look at antisemitism. Diane Bederman

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://dianebederman.com/lets-take-another-look-at-antisemitism/

Let’s take another look at antisemitism.

First the bad news: As long as there is one Jew alive there will be antisemitism.

Now the good news: As long as there is one Jew alive there will be antisemitism.

According to the number of Jews in Roman times, there should be 200 million Jews, today. There are 14 million. If Jews were an animal species we would be declared an endangered species and a protected habitat would be found for us. Oh, wait. We found one: Israel.

I suggest that instead of only responding to Jew hatred with counter statements, facts, and exhortations, let’s sing and dance! Let’s celebrate the fact that we are here: still here, despite the thousands of years of trying to kill us. We, the people, who gave the world the ethic that makes freedom possible; the ethic that decrees all people are born with equal intrinsic value and ALL life is sacred. For this ethic we have been attacked. It is this ethic that riled the Nazis for they knew they were superior to all others and today we are up against another ideology that proclaims itself superior: Islam.

As long as one Jew is alive, Jew hatred will be all over the world, in places where no Jew lived. If ever there was an irrational hate, hate for the Jews is it.

The next time universities put on their Israel Apartheid Week, let’s stand in front of them and dance the Hora. Havah Nagilah, “Let us rejoice.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Ultimate Election Malfeasance: The Manipulation of Reality by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

   http://goudsmit.pundicity.com  http://lindagoudsmit.com

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com and website: http://lindagoudsmit.com

I am very worried about the November 2020 presidential election.

I have been writing about the unparalleled and sinister anti-American attempts to remove President Donald Trump from office for three years. In April 2020 I wrote, The Book of Humanitarian Hoaxes: Killing America with ‘Kindness’, to raise public awareness in advance of the 2020 election. The Book describes fifty of the most sinister leftist, Islamist, globalists attacks on America.

It is now 48 days until the election. The enemies of America are desperate and are behaving like cornered animals poised for attack. Their survival is at stake because if POTUS is reelected, he will take down the Deep State and expose them all. They know it and Trump knows it.

Even more than election fraud, I believe there is going to be an assault on objective reality using artificial intelligence technology called deepfakes. Wikipedia defines deepfakes as, “synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else’s likeness. While the act of faking content is not new, deepfakes leverage powerful techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence to manipulate or generate visual and audio content with a high potential to deceive.”

A sane society of ordered liberty requires agreement on what is real. We believe what we see with our own eyes. I believe the desperate Internet behemoths will try to manipulate what is perceived as real using deepfakes, to win their battle to oust POTUS and control society. It is the epitome of social engineering. Let me explain.

In 1995 I wrote the manuscript for my philosophy of behavior book, Dear America: Who’s Driving the Bus? I was trying to help people understand why they do what they do, so that they could change their behavior. I never considered the book to be political. When I published the book in 2011, my editor remarked that the book is very political. I was stunned because I had never considered the political applications of the book. Now I do.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Americans Know What Time It Is Roger Kimball

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/19/americans-know-what-time-it-is/#.X2c4xbu0Oao.twitter

Friday’s news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died after her long battle with cancer has briefly pushed most other topics off the great chyron running along the country’s metaphysical information highway. Still, there are lingering echoes of some ancient happenings.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, President Trump brokered a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (soon to be joined by Bahrain and other Arab states). This was a world-historical event that not even the silence and distortion of the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other Democratic Party mouthpieces could totally obscure. 

And then there was the president’s announcement on Thursday that he was establishing a “1776 Commission” to “promote patriotic education.” The announcement came in the context of a White House-sponsored conference on American history, how it has been distorted, and how it might be rescued. 

I single out these two items because they underscore things that the Left and the directionless but power-hungry tergiversations of the Left’s NeverTrump enablers have been warning us about since before Trump took office: first, that he is a madman whose blusterings would precipitate numerous wars and, second, he is a crude simpleton who lacks the sophistication demanded by his great office. 

How do those charges look now? Every week it seems there is more good news from the Mideast. The last time I checked, Donald Trump had been nominated not once but twice for the Nobel Peace Prize (which led The Atlantic to declare that it’s time to end the 119-year-old award). 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Loathsomeness of Reza Aslan By Bruce Bawer

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/20/the-loathsomeness-of-reza-aslan/

No one who was familiar with Aslan’s writings should have been terribly surprised by his Friday night tweet, which some would justifiably describe as an explicit threat of physical violence.

The tweet, sent out on the evening of September 18, only minutes after the announcement of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, was succinct and straightforward: “If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire f—ing thing down.” Within hours, these words had been widely retweeted and commented upon. 

Apparently, it was the author’s most attention-getting tweet since January 19, 2019, when—in the wake of the instantly famous encounter at the Lincoln Memorial involving a group of polite MAGA cap-wearing boys from Covington High School in Kentucky, a drum-banging Native American provocateur named Nathan Phillips, and a trash-talking gang of Black Hebrew Israelites—the selfsame author posted the now-iconic picture of one of the boys, Nick Sandmann, standing calmly in the face of Phillips’ provocation, and wrote: “Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?”

The author in question was Reza Aslan, who, when he himself was a kid, fled the Iranian Revolution with his parents for the United States, where he grew up in the Bay Area. He went on to collect a B.A. in religious studies from Santa Clara University, an M.A. in theological studies from Harvard, an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in sociology from UC Santa Barbara. His first book, No god but God (2005), whitewashed Islam and blamed Islamic terror on Western imperialism; the predictable plaudits in such left-wing organs as the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, and Financial Times made it a “worldwide success” (The Guardian) and launched his career as a “multimedia force” (L.A. Review of Books). 

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

A Woke Joe Biden Ends His Hibernation Will the return of the Democratic nominee preserve his fourth-quarter eroding lead? By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/20/a-woke-joe-biden-ends-his-hibernation/

The Democratic presidential nominee had embraced one of the most bizarre but—until recently—effective strategies thus far in a presidential campaign. Like some fictive vampire, Joe Biden has been ensconced in a basement tomb and, now pale, he is reemerging into the light and finding the glare all but lethal.

Under the cloak of the coronavirus and national quarantine, Biden essentially had shut down his campaign from late March to the present. Ostensibly, his handlers believed that any downside of appearing to play-rope-a-dope and to avoid unscripted events was more than outweighed by not putting a sometimes frail 77-year-old man with apparent cognitive challenges out on the campaign trail for 16-hour days.  

Or as his former boss, Barack Obama, reportedly warned Biden of the looming 2020 ordeal and his apparent fragility, “You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t.” He really didn’t have to—except that Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders proved inept messengers of socialism.

The “Summer of Love”

As the media-constructed summer news cycle from May through August wounded Trump—Trump, the Typhoid Mary, COVID-enabler Trump, the mask denialist and bleach drinker Trump, the Herbert Hoover economy-wrecker Trump, the reincarnation of the racist Lester Maddox Trump—Biden kept torpid in his home basement. And that mostly successful sequestration required lots of complicity from our elite. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Arabs: “Palestinians Repeat the Same Mistakes” by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on September 21st, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16523/arabs-palestinians-mistakes

At this pace, Palestinians might wake up one morning to discover that they no longer have any friends in the Arab countries at all.

“The Palestinians failed to establish their state. They failed because they did not want to establish a state. Here I mean the political leaders, some of whom still insist on repeating revolutionary phrases. The establishment of a Palestinian state will be a burden on the Palestinian leaders and will prevent them from practicing corruption…. The Palestinian Authority is no longer suitable to represent the Palestinian people.” — Iraqi writer Farouk Youssef, Al-Arabiya, September 19, 2020.

“Israel did not destroy Syria; Israel did not burn Libya; Israel did not displace the people of Egypt; Israel did not destroy Libya, and Israel did not tear up Lebanon. Before you Arabs blame Israel, take a look at yourselves in the mirror. The problem is in you.” — UAE Islamic cleric Wassem Yousef, Twitter, September 16, 2020.

“Palestinian leaders failed to invest in opportunities. They failed to take strategic decisions and chose [instead] to forge an alliance with Iran.” — Saudi writer Yusef al-Qabalan, Al-Riyadh, September 18, 2020.

The biggest losers, of course, are again the Palestinians — who are quickly losing the sympathy of a growing number of Arabs.

The Palestinians have recalled their ambassadors to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in protest of the signing of the peace deals between the two Gulf states and Israel. The Palestinians are now threatening to withdraw their envoys from any Arab country that follows suits and establishes relations with Israel.