RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-other-crises-demanding-our-attention/

Israel’s battle to neutralize Hamas has dominated our collective attention, as it should. For all of its existence, Israel has been the canary in the mine shaft, the West’s beleaguered outpost of political freedom, tolerance, and equality in the midst of illiberal and tyrannical enemies that want to destroy the West’s power and influence. As Israelis have said over the past month, Israel’s fight is our fight, and always has been.

Yet our country is at a dangerous crossroads, with other threats both at home and abroad that demand our attention, and that should be the focus of next year’s elections. We are at the point where democracy’s historically bad habit of kicking multiple cans down the road is becoming unsustainable, if not lethal.

The Ukraine Stalemate

You didn’t have to be Nostradamus to predict that the Russo-Ukrainian war would become a stalemate redolent of the Western Front in World War I. For all the self-congratulation of the Nato countries about standing up to Vladimir Putin and protecting the “rules-based world order,” their money and materiel have been just enough to create the current stasis.

We seem to be pursuing a Mr. Micawber foreign policy, waiting for “something to turn up,” like a coup in Russia, to get us out of this quagmire. But more-realist commentators are casting doubt on Ukraine’s chances of defeating Russia and recovering their purloined territories.

In the U.S., the policy positions have settled into a bipartisan contrast: America First isolationism and a “no more costly endless wars abroad” sentiment vs. “aggression must be checked and deterred” by intervention lest we incentivize other aggressors to try conclusions. The result is the choice still facing us, between the bad and the worse.

Yet this debate is an exercise in shutting the barn door after the horse got out. The real story here is how our feckless foreign policy in the Nineties assumed that in a post-Soviet world we could enjoy the “peace dividend” and cut our defense spending.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2023/11/20/alan-dershowitz-alleged-rise-of-islamophobia-at-universities-fake-n4924086

On the latest episode of “Life, Liberty & Levin” on Fox News, famed lawyer and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz scoffed at the idea that there’s a rise of Islamophobia on college campuses today.

“Let me ask you this, Alan — we have a very big bureaucracy. We have a huge Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. We have a huge Civil Rights Division and another big bureaucracy called the Department of Education,” began host Mark Levin. “Donald Trump signed an executive order, which gives those authorities the power to act against anti-Semitism and threats on college campuses. Maybe they’re doing it here and there. I’m not seeing a big push. I’m not hearing from the attorney general. I’m not hearing from the head of either Civil Rights Division. What the hell is going on?”

Dershowitz explained how he was at the White House when Trump announced the executive order and how he congratulated him on it despite the fact Dershowitz is not a Republican. 

“I congratulated him for his great efforts in getting the administration behind this effort to root out anti-Semitism,” he said. “It hasn’t worked. In fact, what’s happened, and it’s this administration and Biden as well, whenever they talk about anti-Semitism, they say, ‘and Islamophobia.’ I’ve got news for you. There is no Islamophobia at any university in the United States. It’s a fake. It’s virtue parading. Oh, we have to fight anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Let me tell you who the anti-Semites are. They are largely, not completely, the radical Muslims who claim to be victims of Islamophobia. This is a one-sided issue.”

In fact, real incidents of Islamophobia are so hard to come by that a Palestinian man in Ohio faked an Islamophobic hate crime last month. Unfortunately, too many people on the left choose to pretend this isn’t a one-sided issue.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/11/22/democracy-dies-in-darkness-dems-overwhelmingly-back-big-tech-govt-censorship-ii-tipp-poll/

Americans have come to realize that being online can mean having your speech rights curtailed. But that doesn’t mean they like it. Indeed, they mostly oppose the idea, in particular when it’s Big Tech and Big Government censoring together, according to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll.

With growing complaints over online censorship, the online national I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from Nov. 1-3, asked 1,400 respondents the following question: “Do you approve or disapprove of Big Tech companies working with federal agencies to engage in online censorship?”

For most people, the answer is negative. Of those who responded, 43% say they either disapproved of government and large tech and social media firms cooperating with each other to curb Americans’ speech “strongly” (26%) or “somewhat” (17%).

By comparison, 36% say they approve of it “strongly” (18%) or “somewhat” (18%). A significantly large group, 22%, say they were “not sure.”

The poll has a +/-2.7 percentage point margin of error.

But, the relative closeness of the response is deceptive. When broken down by demographics and political affiliation, surprisingly sharp differences between and within different groups emerge.

Start with politics. Democrats overwhelmingly approve of Big Tech and Big Government censoring online content, 57% “approve” to just 25% “disapprove.”

Compare that with Republicans, who are almost exactly the opposite of the Dems in their response: 26% “approve,” vs. 54% “disapprove.” Similarly, independents “approve” by just 21%, while they “disapprove” by 52%. Republicans and independents are nearly identical, while Democrats are the outlier.