ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

A Conversation with Daniel Pipes by Gregoire Canlorbe

Posted By on July 8th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16197/daniel-pipes-conversation

“Trump came to office with minimal knowledge of the outside world, just impressions and emotions. He also lacked a philosophy or a network…. Fortunately, some of Trump’s instincts are solid, for example, as concerns China, Iran, Israel, and Venezuela, and he does not get intimidated by the Establishment consensus.” — Daniel Pipes.

“Antisemitism long ago moved in the main from the Right to the Left; Jeremy Corbyn has no conservative counterpart. These days, mainstream conservative parties are more philosemitic than antisemitic. Leftists keep trying to turn conservatives like Victor Orbán into antisemites but that is silly.” — Daniel Pipes.

“But that improvement [of the position of Christians and Jews in the Muslim world] lasted only so long as the Europeans remained. When they left, the status of Jews and Christians fell far below what it had traditionally been. About 95% of Jews that lived in Muslim-majority countries have already fled; Christians are not far behind.” — Daniel Pipes.

Daniel Pipes is an American historian and president of the Middle East Forum. His writing focuses on Islamism, the Middle East, and U.S. foreign policy. His archive is at www.DanielPipes.org

Canlorbe: Do you expect the George Floyd protests to leave, in the American collective memory, a mark comparable to the September 11 attacks and the Vietnam War?

Pipes: The great question is: Will the current lurch to the left be temporary or permanent? I worry it is permanent because liberals are capitulating to progressives as never before. Will that trend continue or end? It is hard to forecast when very much in the moment.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Julie Kelly’s NeverTrump Exposé ‘Disloyal Opposition’ Hits Store Shelves Today By Debra Heine

Posted By on July 8th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/07/julie-kellys-nevertrump-expose-disloyal-opposition-hits-store-shelves-today/

Like no one else in conservative media, American Greatness author Julie Kelly has gleefully needled, mocked, and embarrassed the obnoxious NeverTrump movement in numerous articles and posts on Twitter. Most importantly, she has strived to expose them as the shameless and soulless grifters they are.

Her new book, Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried―And Failed―To Take Down the President, hits store shelves today, taking her one woman crusade against these “petty, vengeful, bombastic, reactionary, and abusive” fake conservatives to new heights.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

New Jersey incumbents steamroll progressive challengers in primaries

Posted By on July 8th, 2020

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/506325-incumbents-steamroll-progressive-challengers-in-new-jersey-house-primaries

Incumbent Democrats in New Jersey trounced progressive challengers across House primaries Tuesday, two weeks after liberals appeared likely to have scored key victories in still undecided races in neighboring New York. 

Lawmakers in all primaries were either leading their challengers by substantial margins or outright clinched the Democratic nomination in their races Tuesday night despite a surge in mailed-in ballots that will continue to be accepted until next week.

The easy wins marked a contrast to New York, where progressive Jamaal Bowman was leading Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, by 25 points in an election that is still to be called. Meanwhile, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D), chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, was running neck-and-neck with Democratic challenge Suraj Patel.

By contrast, no challenger got close in New Jersey.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The Press Is Already Trying Whip Up A New Pandemic Panic Michael Fumento

Posted By on July 8th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/08/the-press-is-already-trying-whip-up-a-new-pandemic-panic/
Oh, no! With the planet still unlocking and some parts still tightly buttoned down, and with the world economy plummeting, “China Researchers Discover New Swine Flu with ‘Pandemic Potential,’ ” blares CNN. “Scientists Say New Strain of Swine Flu Virus Is Spreading to Humans in China,” shrieks the New York Times. Say it ain’t so!

Okay, it ain’t so. Not in any meaningful way. The media should go back to “murder hornets,” or find another asteroid with a chance in a zillion of hitting Earth.

The virus in question, G4 EA H1N1, is genetically descended from the H1N1 swine flu that caused what the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in 2009. G4 shows “all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus,” said a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

But … there are a few little caveats.

First, while the Times says the virus “is spreading silently in workers on pig farms in China,” that means pigs-to-humans and that’s been going on for so time. “This is not a ‘new’ new virus; it’s been very common in pigs since 2016,” tweeted Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington. “There’s no evidence that G4 is circulating in humans, despite five years of extensive exposure. That’s the key context to keep in mind.”

Okay, but it’s a swine flu !!! Um, yes, pigs appear to play a role in most strains of flu, along with birds. Specifically, the massive swine farms of China are “mixing bowls” to produce new flu strains.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

A time for choosing By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on July 8th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/a_time_for_choosing.html

In 1964, Ronald Reagan burst upon the national political scene with his consequential speech about America’s worrisome move away from traditional American governance that focuses on the individual and reveres traditional morality. Americans nevertheless elected a Democrat who believed that smart government could right all wrongs.

That choice set America on the path to the 2020 election. This time, the choice is no longer between bigger or smaller government. Instead, Americans must choose between individual liberty under the Constitution or full-bore, totalitarian Marxism.

We chose wrong in 1964 but America’s inherent strength gave us a 46-year grace period. This time, however, we’d better get it right for there are no do-overs.

ISRAEL, POLITICS Comments turned off

Progressive Democrats Threaten Cut-Off of Military Aid to Israel Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez leads the anti-Israel campaign in Congress. Joseph Klein

Posted By on July 8th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/progressive-democrats-threaten-cut-military-aid-joseph-klein/

With the wind at her back following her recent primary victory, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is taking the lead in challenging Israel’s possible extension of sovereignty over certain areas within the West Bank. She authored a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warning that any move by Israel to extend its sovereignty into such areas would jeopardize continued U.S. military aid to the Jewish state. Senator Bernie Sanders signed AOC’s letter along with 11 other Democrat House members, including AOC’s fellow “Squad” members Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley. Anti-Semitic organizations that back the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) against Israel are also in AOC’s corner.

“Should the Israeli government continue down this path,” AOC’s letter warns, “we will work to ensure non-recognition of annexed territories as well as pursue legislation that conditions the $3.8 billion in U.S. military funding to Israel to ensure that U.S. taxpayers are not supporting annexation in any way. We will include human rights conditions and the withholding of funds for the offshore procurement of Israeli weapons equal to or exceeding the amount the Israeli government spends annually to fund settlements, as well as the policies and practices that sustain and enable them.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Bunch of Lefty Thought Leaders Timidly Dissent From the Mob Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on July 8th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/07/bunch-lefty-thought-leaders-timidly-dissent-mob-daniel-greenfield/

If you expected a moment of courage from liberals, you’ll need to keep waiting because the Harper’s letter isn’t it.

It starts out, in the same fashion as any form of lefty  movement criticism of extremist must these days, with a condemnation of Trump and a warning that the “right” will exploit cancel culture. Except they don’t name it that.

“Resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting,” the letter argues. “While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.”

And then comes the, “we’re living under Stalinsim, but we’re nervous about saying so.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

Purifying Publishing The cultural commissars come for conservative books. Bruce Bawer

Posted By on July 8th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/purifying-publishing-bruce-bawer/

Of America’s most powerful and prominent cultural institutions, it’s quick work naming those that aren’t entirely left-wing satrapies. TV? Fox News, although things are looking less and less encouraging there. Colleges? Hillsdale, I guess, though how many Ivy League faculty members would ever admit to having heard of it? Newspapers? The New York Post (sometimes), Wall Street Journal (kind of), and perhaps one or two others from sea to shining sea. Silicon Valley? Nothing. Hollywood? ¡Nada! Big business? Hmm: what is there, nowadays, honestly, other than that My Pillow guy?

One field in which there’s at least a soupçon of ideological diversity is the book trade. Yes, staffers at the major publishing houses are overwhelmingly on the left. Ditto bookstore employees. Plus the people who give out the major book awards. Not to mention that the heftiest advances for political books go to Democrats. Since the turn of the century, the biggest nonfiction book deal, amounting to at least $65 million, was for Michelle Obama’s Becoming (2018) and for an as-yet-unpublished opus by Barack; second – raking in $15 million – was Bill Clinton’s My Life (2004); third – at $14 million – was Hillary’s Hard Choices (2014).

One more thing about the reflexive leftism of the book scene. Thanks to today’s lethal cancel culture, even classics are at risk. Recently, in an article for the School Library Journal headlined “Little House, Big Problem: What To Do with ‘Classic’ Books That Are Also Racist,” Marva Hinton identified both Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird as racist. No, she didn’t just say that they contained racist language, which would have been fair enough; she asserted that these two books – both of them key texts in the history of the American struggle against racism – are in fact racist.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Bret Stephens, the Gray Lady, and ‘The Great Awokening’By Noah Carl 

Posted By on July 8th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/07/bret-stephens-the-gray-lady-and-the-great-a
A small piece of advice for anyone preparing a submission to the New York Times: do perform a thorough background check on each and every person you intend to cite.

A spike in the level of outrage on Twitter is by no means a rare event. Regular users are accustomed to glancing over at the “Trending” tab to see who or what has raised people’s hackles that particular day. It is not so common, however, for that type of spike to be generated by something published in America’s newspaper of record, still less an instance of outrage that should prompt the editors of said newspaper to issue a major correction and an “Editor’s Note.”

Many will recall that Twitter went into meltdown on June 3, after the New York Times published a bellicose op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) titled “Send In the Troops.” But this is not what I have in mind. The event to which I’m referring took place at the end of last year, and although it is but one squall in a vast and tempestuous sea of online indignation, I believe it offers some valuable insights into cultural trends in the English-speaking world.

The kerfuffle began when Bret Stephens—whose journalistic career, even before the event in question, had not been completely divorced from controversy—published a column titled “The Secrets of Jewish Genius.” In the column, Stephens argued that the reason Jews have made such outsized scientific and cultural contributions is not that they are smarter than other groups, but rather that they have benefited—over the course of their history—from certain beliefs, practices and traditions. These would include being asked “not only to observe and obey but also to discuss and disagree” and understanding that “everything that is intangible—knowledge most of all—is potentially everlasting.” In fact, the column’s original subheading was “It’s not about having high I.Q.s.” (Stephens even went so far as to say “what makes Jews special is that they aren’t,” suggesting that explanatory coherence was not his primary concern.)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Reign of Error By Anthony Esolen 

Posted By on July 8th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/07/a-reign-of-error/

What we think about things can be as important as the things themselves, because it forms our moral stance toward the world. But what if our thoughts are in error?

At the end of The Unheavenly City: The Nature and the Future of Our Urban Crisis (1968), Edward Banfield presents a prospect regarding race relations that seems to have been fulfilled since his tumultuous years and ours: a reign of error.

Let me set the stage. America had become the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, and the wealth was making its way to the lower classes also. Thus the main “accidental factor” that had locked Americans in a vicious cycle of white discrimination and prejudice on one side and low standards and attainments for blacks on the other would be largely alleviated. Such prejudice, said Banfield, writing during the years of urban riots, was already in decline.

By any reasonable criterion, he was correct about that decline. Consider, for one example, our nearly universal acceptance of interracial marriage. Such acceptance was unimaginable when “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” was nominated for the Academy Award for best picture of 1967, largely on account of its message (for a much superior and gut-ripping film on interracial marriage, racial animosity, and rank injustice, see 1964’s “One Potato, Two Potato”). More than 1-in-6 new marriages in the United States are interracial. That alone, I had once thought, would suffice to put those animosities to rest, as it had done between other embittered groups.