ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Progressive Politics Are Not Really Progressive By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on November 12th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/11/progressive-politics-
Some progressives lamented the apparent defeat of radical progressive African-American candidates such as gubernatorial nominees Stacey Abrams of Georgia and Florida’s Andrew Gillum by blaming allegedly treasonous white women. Apparently white women did not vote sufficiently en bloc in accordance with approved notions of identity politics tribalism.

According to this progressive orthodoxy, being female, gay, or minority trumps everything else. But, of course, no one believes in such mythical notions of solidarity, least of all progressives themselves.

White women were expected in Michigan, for example, to vote against a sterling African-American senatorial candidate John James, whose résumé was far more impressive than his victorious opponent, incumbent Senator Debbie Stabenow.

There was no such thing as minorities on the collective barricades when it was a matter of defeating California congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng, first-generation child of refugees, Asian, female, former Stanford student body president, and Yale MBA in her singular bid to unseat a seven-term white male Democratic incumbent.

The outraged identity politics industry has entered the realm of insanity when it screams at the “treason” of white women while bragging that 95 percent of black women voted for a white male Robert O’Rourke against Latino Ted Cruz—while deploring that 59 percent of white women who voted against white male O’Rourke.

In fact, progressive advocates sought to ensure that lots of black, Asian, and Latino men and women lost their senate, congressional, and state house races anytime they were pitted against white-male or white-female left-wing opponents, often with far more power, money, and influence at their disposal.

So dispense once and for all with the idea of the universal sisterhood of identity politics. Or at least recalibrate and redefine minority status as being a progressive of any race or gender first, and, only incidentally, female or nonwhite.

IMMIGRATION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Mass Migration and the Failure of Civilizational Nerve The fatal incoherence of globalism. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on November 12th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271881/mass-migration-and-failure-civilizational-nerve-bruce-thornton

The people spoke on election day, and they decided that they like divided government, handing the House to the Democrats and strengthening the Republican hold on the Senate. This means that many pressing issues needing attention will languish in political limbo for another two years, even as the nation’s dysfunctions worsen. One of the longest and more serious is our broken immigration system, at a time when mass movements of peoples into Europe and the U.S. threaten the identity and core principles of Western Civilization.

Seven thousand migrants from Central America are still making their way through Mexico on their way to the U.S. These “caravans” appear to be organized and funded by the international left. In recent years such vast movements of people have become more common in Europe, which has been enduring such exoduses from the Middle East and North Africa for years. They accelerated in 2015 after German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued an open invitation to migrants. More recently they have been coming not on foot, but mainly on boats sailing across the Mediterranean. So far this year, nearly 100,000 have reached Spain, Italy, and Greece from North Africa and the Middle East. Both here and in Europe, these migrations have created logistical nightmares and increased security threats, and more importantly have empowered nationalist and patriotic political movements with a potent weapon to use against globalist establishments.

This is an existential crisis the West should have seen coming, because it was predicted by French travel-writer Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints. The book’s danger to the transnational progressive assault on national identity is suggested by its inclusion on the hard-left Southern Poverty Law Center’s index librorum prohibitorum, and the knee-jerk dismissal of the novel as “racist” by bad readers. For Raspail doesn’t just tell a compelling story. He also lays out the West’s fashionable self-loathing and failure of civilizational nerve that create this disaster.

Raspail’s novel begins when millions of Third World peoples simultaneously start hijacking ships and sailing for Europe. Once there, the migrants swarm the villas and resorts of the Côte d’Azur while the French flee in panic to the north. One reason for the failure of the French to resist the invaders is the fashionable civilizational guilt over alleged Western crimes like racism, colonialism, and imperialism. This weakness emboldens the invaders. In India, where the mass migration starts, the French consul scolds a Catholic bishop who approves of the migration and is proud to be “bearing witness” to it. The consul retorts,

Bearing witness to what? To your faith? Your religion? To your Christian civilization? Oh no, none of that! Bearing witness against yourselves, like the anti-Western cynics you’ve become. Do you think the poor devils that flock to your side aren’t any the wiser? Nonsense! They see right through you. For them, white skin means weak convictions. They know how weak yours are, they know you’ve given in.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

UW Institutes ‘Diversity’ Training After Professor’s Op-Ed on Sex Differences By Toni Airaksinen

Posted By on November 12th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/uw-institutes-diversity-training-after-professors-op-ed-on-sex-differences/

The University of Washington-Seattle has caved to student demands culminating after a computer science professor pointed out why efforts to close the “gender gap” in computer science may be futile.

The controversy began in June, when UW-Seattle Professor Stuart Reges published “Why Women Don’t Code” for Quillette, in which he articulated why women are less interested in computer science than men. (Hint, hint: men and women are different).

Though Reges admits the title was hyperbolic — as he has taught hundreds of women to code during his career — UW students didn’t see it as such. They circulated an internal memo of concern ad lobbied UW against his “gender harassment.”

Roughly five months later, a group of graduate students have announced that they’ve negotiated with senior officials at the UW computer science school to ensure that “more will be done to address gender harassment at the Allen School.”

While it’s unclear exactly how many “grievance demands” students filed, the school agreed to at least three.

From now on, UW will provide “intersectional diversity and sexual harassment training to both [student employees] and [the professors who supervise them]” which all students and professors will be highly encouraged to attend.

Additionally, going forward, “a group of mostly senior faculty will review the introductory programming courses to ensure that they are inclusive of students from all backgrounds.” To be fair, it’s unclear what this means.

How will professors make coding classes more “inclusive of students from all backgrounds”? Will they mandate textbooks feature more racial and gender minorities? CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Macron: Nationalism a ‘Betrayal of Patriotism’ By Rick Moran

Posted By on November 12th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/macron-nationalism-a-betrayal-of-patriotism/

French President Emmanuel Macron used a speech commemorating the ending of World War I to obliquely criticize Donald Trump, saying that nationalism was a “betrayal of patriotism.”

Trump, who has proclaimed himself a nationalist, sat just a few feet away.

Reuters:

“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism: nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” Macron said in a 20-minute address delivered from under the Arc de Triomphe to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One.

“By pursuing our own interests first, with no regard to others’, we erase the very thing that a nation holds most precious, that which gives it life and makes it great: its moral values.”

Sorry, but Americans do not elect a president to put the interests of other countries first. Neither do French voters. Macron can virtue signal all he wants, but in the end, if he put the interests of any other country before those of France, he would be hung from the Eiffel Tower by voters.

Trump, who has pursued “America First” policies since entering the White House and in the run-up to the congressional elections this month declared himself a “nationalist”, sat still and stony-faced in the front row as Macron spoke.

There was no immediate response from either the White House or the Kremlin to Macron’s comments.

What is “nationalism”? Webster’s defines the term as “loyalty and devotion to a nation especially; a sense of national consciousness; exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranationalgroups.” The dictionary lists “patriotism” as the lone synonym.

“Nationalism” is not a problem. But the left has chosen to conflate “nationalism” with “fascism,” “xenophobia,” “chauvinism,” and other problematic terms when, in point of fact, most Americans see “nationalism” as simple, heartfelt patriotism. CONTINUE AT SITE

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: REFLECTIONS ON VETERANS’ DAY

Posted By on November 11th, 2018

Yesterday, November 11, 2018, marked the 100th anniversary the end of World War 1 and Veterans’ Day which honors all those persons who served in all America’s armed forces. In 1954 at the urging of veterans’ groups Armistice Day was renamed Veterans Day.

The “war to end all wars” failed to do so and murderous ideologies – Nazi and Marxist- were to wreak death and destruction for most of what the eminent British historian Robert Conquest called “A Ravaged Century.”

In the name of peace, treaties and pacts, negotiations and appeasement were attempted with implacable enemies. The prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah warned of the false promises of peace, but perhaps the secular poet Emily Dickinson said it best:

I many times thought Peace had come
When Peace was far away —
As Wrecked Men — deem they sight the Land —
At Centre of the Sea —
And struggle slacker — but to prove
As hopelessly as I —
How many the fictitious Shores —
Before the Harbor be.

rsk

BOOKS Comments turned off

Roger Underwood: On Armistice Day, a Pilot Remembers

Posted By on November 11th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/11/armistice-day-spitfire-pilot-remembers/

Geoffrey Wellum’s memoir does not glorify war. On the contrary it demonstrates its folly, cruelty and tragedy. On this day, November 11, it also serves as a reminder of all who bent their will to persist with something they hated in the name of a noble cause.

I have only just discovered First Light by Geoffrey Wellum. Published in 2002, it is an account of the author’s experiences as an RAF fighter pilot in 1940-43. It is based on notes he kept at the time, but which lay dormant for nearly forty years before he was able to confront and write about his memories of that time.

It is one of the most authentic books I have read about the Battle of Britain and the early war years as seen through the eyes of a young Spitfire pilot. It is not a gung-ho “Biggles” adventure, quite the reverse. Rather it provides an unfolding tragedy as a young man with a passion for aircraft and flying is caught up in the horrors of war. Pain and sadness soon replace excitement and exhilaration.

Wellum left school aged 17 in 1938 and in early 1939 was accepted as a trainee pilot by the RAF. After a brief period of instruction, first flying a Tiger Moth biplane and then graduating to the lumbering American-built Harvard, his training was suddenly cut short and he found himself posted to an operational fighter squadron. It was the time of the Dunkirk evacuation. As Churchill put it, the Battle of France was over and the Battle of Britain was about to begin. The RAF’s fighter squadrons had been losing pilots all through the Battle of France (especially those flying early model Hurricanes against the latest Messchersmitt 109s), and Wellum and his colleagues at the training schools were drafted into the real world up to a year before they would normally have been considered ready.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The plight of Asia Bibi should have everyone in the West trembling Charlotte Gill

Posted By on November 11th, 2018

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/11/plight-asia-bibi-should-have-everyone-west-trembling/

Watching the horrifying crowds of men in Pakistan calling for the death of Asia Bibi seemed like watching another, medieval world. Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman, spent eight years on death row, after allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad during a row with neighbours. Last week, the Supreme Court acquitted her, and she secretly left her prison, causing violent protests from Islamists, who said she should be hanged for blasphemy. The Foreign Office has said that she is still in the country, meaning her life is at tremendous risk. Even the judges who allowed her release are in danger now, after an Islamist leader said all three “deserved to be killed”.

Many of us will rightfully feel far removed from Bibi, a victim of one of the most oppressive mobs this decade has seen. But, while the secularisation of the West may have led us to believe that the violence and authoritarian nature of Pakistan could not be replicated here, both history and contemporary life show us that societies twist and turn, and new movements are quite capable of replacing religion. What happened to Bibi should serve as a lesson as to what happens when censorship is allowed to engulf a country.

Indeed, there are troublesome parallels here. The UK has been slowly moving in a dangerous direction of late, steered mostly by the politically correct Left, which has become ever-more authoritarian about what people can say, and therefore believe. Their behaviour is alarmingly akin to that of the religious fanatics in Pakistan: monitoring words for any signs of evil sentiment, sometimes misquoting them as proof of wicked deeds. Heavily applied political correctness is no different from religious extremism. It is the same thing: believing that everyone is blaspheming against you.

The news is littered with examples of this sweeping fanaticism, which paints a picture of a new religion – a belief system with its own absolute truths, revealed only when someone offends against them. Insult the idea that people can self-declare whether they are male or female, or suggest that the gender pay gap is not a real thing, and you find yourself at the whim of the fundamentalists. The offensive may not be thrown in prison, but they will be ostracised and cast out by way of Twitter excommunication. And let’s not forget the existence of dubious laws that can punish people for “insults” that cause “distress”.

BOOKS Comments turned off

‘Peace at Last’ Review: Remembering Flanders Fields A day of spontaneity—the war is over!—changed over time, as celebration morphed into the solemnity of Remembrance Day. Brendan Simms reviews “Peace at Last” by Guy Cuthbertson. By Brendan Simms

Posted By on November 11th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/peace-at-last-review-remembering-flanders-fields-1541968562

Of all the British traditions, the observance of Remembrance Day, which marks the end of World War I on Nov. 11, 1918, is surely the most poignant and deep-rooted. Every year, millions gather in churches or public squares—or take part in somber parades—to commemorate not merely the 900,000 or so British and Empire men who died in 1914-18 but also the British war dead since. For the two weeks or so leading up to the day, an imitation poppy—the flower of Flanders, where most of the British losses in the Great War were suffered—is widely worn. It is a sober, moving day, a fixture in the national calendar.

The original Armistice Day, as Guy Cuthbertson shows in “Peace at Last,” was very different from the current Remembrance Day. It was characterized by striking contrasts. On the Western Front, the morning started as usual, with continued small-arms and artillery fire as the Allies made their final “push.” The last British soldier to be killed in action was George Edwin Ellison, a middle-aged man with the Royal Irish Lancers who fell at Mons, in Belgium, near where he had been involved in some of the first fighting at the start of the war in August 1914. His death, like those of the other men who were killed on the war’s last couple of days, has often been described as futile, because the combatant countries had by then agreed on a precise timetable for the cessation of fighting. In fact, hostilities continued up to the last hour to ensure that the Germans did not wriggle out of their armistice obligations, which were effectively terms of surrender.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Hillary Will Run Again Reinventing herself as a liberal firebrand, Mrs. Clinton will easily capture the 2020 nomination. By Mark Penn and Andrew Stein

Posted By on November 11th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-will-run-again-1541963599

Get ready for Hillary Clinton 4.0. More than 30 years in the making, this new version of Mrs. Clinton, when she runs for president in 2020, will come full circle—back to the universal-health-care-promoting progressive firebrand of 1994. True to her name, Mrs. Clinton will fight this out until the last dog dies. She won’t let a little thing like two stunning defeats stand in the way of her claim to the White House.

It’s been quite a journey. In July 1999, Mrs. Clinton began her independent political career on retiring Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s farm in upstate New York. Her Senate platform included support for a balanced budget, the death penalty and incremental health-care reform. It was a decisive break from her early-1990s self. Hillary Clinton 2.0 was a moderate, building on the success of her communitarian “It Takes a Village” appeals and pledging to bring home the bacon for New York. She emphasized her religious background, voiced strong support for Israel, voted for the Iraq war, and took a hard line against Iran.

This was arguably the most successful version of Hillary Clinton. She captured the hearts and minds of New York’s voters and soared to an easy re-election in 2006, leaving Bill and all his controversies behind.

But Hillary 2.0 could not overcome Barack Obama, the instant press sensation. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton held fast to centrist positions that would have assured her victory in the general election. But progressive leaders and donors abandoned her for the antiwar Mr. Obama. Black voters who had been strong Clinton supporters in New York and Arkansas left her column to elect the first African-American president. History was made, but not by Mrs. Clinton. Though she won more delegates from Democratic primaries, activists in caucus states gave Mr. Obama, who had called her “likable enough,” the heartbreaking win.

Licking her wounds, Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state while she planned her comeback. It was during this time that the more liberal Hillary 3.0 emerged. She believed she could never win a primary as a moderate, so she entered the 2016 primary as a progressive like Mr. Obama. Then she moved further left as Sen. Bernie Sanders came closer to derailing her nomination. This time she was able to contain her opponent’s support, crucially by bringing African-American voters into her camp.

But Mrs. Clinton’s transformation during the primaries, especially on social and cultural issues, cost her an easy win against Donald Trump. As Hillary 3.0 catered to the coastal elites who had eluded her in 2008, Mr. Trump stole many of the white working-class voters who might have been amenable to the previous version. Finally she had the full support of the New York Times and the other groups that had shunned her for Mr. Obama—but only at the cost of an unforeseen collapse in support in the Midwest.

Claims of a Russian conspiracy and the unfairness of the Electoral College shielded Mrs. Clinton from ever truly conceding she had lost. She was robbed, she told herself, yet again. But after two years of brooding—including at book length—Mrs. Clinton has come unbound. She will not allow this humiliating loss at the hands of an amateur to end the story of her career. You can expect her to run for president once again. Maybe not at first, when the legions of Senate Democrats make their announcements, but definitely by the time the primaries are in full swing.

Mrs. Clinton has a 75% approval rating among Democrats, an unfinished mission to be the first female president, and a personal grievance against Mr. Trump, whose supporters pilloried her with chants of “Lock her up!” This must be avenged.

Expect Hillary 4.0 to come out swinging. She has decisively to win those Iowa caucus-goers who have never warmed up to her. They will see her now as strong, partisan, left-leaning and all-Democrat—the one with the guts, experience and steely-eyed determination to defeat Mr. Trump. She has had two years to go over what she did wrong and how to take him on again. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Who Lost The House? John McCain His July 2017 vote killed ObamaCare repeal and made Democratic lies impossible to refute. 24 Comments By Jason Lewis

Posted By on November 11th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-lost-the-house-john-mccain-1541968422

The Republican Party lost its House majority on July 28, 2017, when Sen. John McCain ended the party’s seven-year quest to repeal ObamaCare. House leadership had done an admirable job herding cats. On the second try, we passed the American Health Care Act in May. Then McCain’s inscrutable vote against the Senate’s “skinny repeal” killed the reform effort.

McCain’s last-minute decision prompted a “green wave” of liberal special-interest money, which was used to propagate false claims that the House plan “gutted coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.” That line was the Democrats’ most potent attack in the midterms.

It was endlessly repeated by overt partisans in the media. An especially egregious column in Minneapolis’s Star Tribune asserted the AHCA would turn back the clock so that “insurers could consider sexual assaults and even pregnancy [to be] pre-existing conditions.” In fact, the bill prohibited sex discrimination and stated: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting insurers to limit access to health coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions.”

The problem was—and still is—that under ObamaCare all policyholders are charged as if they are sick. If restoring a modicum of traditional underwriting by loosening the Affordable Care Act’s strict age-rating rule discriminated against the old, then ObamaCare was—and is—discriminating against the young. The AHCA would have relieved this problem by allowing states to opt out of ObamaCare’s most onerous mandates and instead cover the most difficult-to-insure with $138 billion worth of high-risk pools. That would have arrested the ObamaCare “death spiral” and, as the Congressional Budget Office admitted, reduced both premiums and the deficit.

Emerging in response to World War II-era wage and price controls, health insurance has been tied to employment. When older workers lose their coverage along with their job, it creates a serious barrier for entering the individual market, as pre-existing conditions are often the result of age. This is primarily due to an unfair tax code that gives employers but not individuals tax breaks for buying insurance. CONTINUE AT SITE