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History as Progress, History as Horror Anthony Daniels

Posted By on April 16th, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/04/history-as-progress-history-as-horror/

Looking recently at a picture of a demonstration against the celebration of Australia Day, I could not help but notice a person of Aboriginal descent dressed in that traditional item of costume, the T-shirt, employing that equally traditional instrument, the megaphone.

The megaphone is the perfect instrument for the expression of one of the most reliable and gratifying of all emotions, self-righteousness. The megaphone is versatile: it is also the perfect instrument for the demagogue. It couldn’t be better for making dialogue impossible, for drowning out dissension and for the propagation of half-truths.

Historiography is now the favoured subject of the self-righteous demagogue. As a science (I use the word in its loose, continental European sense), historiography’s influence on mass psychology is much underestimated. With the rise in the number of educated persons—by which I mean persons who have spent at least a fifth of their lives in supposedly educational establishments—it has become ever more salient, ever more influential.

The protests against the celebration of Australia Day were an illustration of the effect of changing historiography. A day intended to celebrate the founding of a successful, free and prosperous country was turned by demonstrators into its very opposite, a day of lamentation for that very founding. Thus, the same event more than two centuries ago, the arrival of the First Fleet, gave rise to diametrically opposite assessments of its moral and political significance.

All historiographies are incomplete, of course, for they cannot encompass all that happened in history, and therefore are open to attack by those who object to what they omit. I began to think about this matter when I took an interest in medical history. The first book I read on the subject was Singer and Underwood’s A Short History of Medicine (not so short, I thought it), which was in essence an account of the progress of medicine to its state of enlightenment as of 1962, when the book was published. It consisted of brief descriptions of the work of men who had contributed the new and improved ideas that contributed to the science’s upward march, each contributing his mite, with a few, such as Harvey, Pasteur, Lister, Koch and Ehrlich, contributing much more than a mere mite.

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‘Remove Your Church’: The Persecution of Christians, March 2023 by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on April 16th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19583/persecution-of-christians-march

“You should remove your church, because we cannot watch our members turning to Christianity and keep quiet.” — Sheikh Shafi Mukama “ordering the father and son to leave [their church] in 2022, while other from the mob kept watch outside,” morningstarnews.org, March 22, 2023, Uganda.

“Requirements for obtaining permission to build houses of worship in Indonesia are onerous and hamper the establishment of such buildings for Christians and other faiths…. [T]hey are often met with delays or lack of response from officials. Well-organized radical Muslims secretly mobilize outside people to intimidate and pressure members of minority faiths.” — morningstarnews.org, March 24, 2023, Indonesia.

“According to the UN, ongoing insecurity in eastern DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] has displaced 300,000 from their homes in February alone.” — opendoors.ph, March 22, 2023, Democratic Republic of Congo.

“It is a massacre like…killing animals.” — A key church minister, persecution.org, International Christian Concern March 20, 2023, Democratic Republic of Congo.

“For leaving Islam to accept Christ,” say a Mar. 19 report, “a young mother… was chained in her home, subjected to electrical shocks at a psychiatric hospital and has lost her children.” …. [H]er problems began, chiefly from her Muslim husband, who “tried to force her to renounce her faith by chaining her legs and tightening the chains…. [H]er parents and siblings are all Muslims [a local source said], who believe she is suffering mental illness for believing in Christ.” — morningstarnews, March 19, 2023, Sudan.

“[S]ince the start of the war, the Christian population has reportedly diminished by more than 80 per cent, from an estimated 1.5 million to 250,000… More than 350 churches have been destroyed in attacks carried out by terrorists during this period…. On the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war, therefore, I want to raise awareness about the country’s Christians, in the hope that the international community acts to prevent their tragedy from continuing before it is too late.” — Report by Natasha Dado, thenationalnews.com, April 16, 2023.

“The rampant trafficking of Coptic women and girls is a direct violation of their most basic rights…. The crimes committed against these women must be urgently addressed by the Egyptian government, ending impunity for kidnappers, their accomplices, and police who refuse to perform their duties…. The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt. There are countless families who report that police have either been complicit in the kidnapping or at the very least bribed into silence.” — copticsolidarity.org, March 16, 2023 and September 10, 2020, Egypt.

“For Christians in the Middle East, the Christmas season is not ‘the most beautiful time of the year’ as in the popular Andy Williams song. On the contrary, after two millennia of Christian presence, the Middle East is slowly but surely being cleansed of Christians…. It is striking that the Western powers, which have a majority Christian population, are not concerned at all by such a disaster.” — Matija Šerić, “Christians In The Middle East: A Persecuted And Forgotten People,” eurasiareview.com, April 15,2023.

“The only country in the region with a growing Christian community is Israel, where the Christian population grew by 1.4% in 2020…. Christians in Israel benefit from the only functioning democracy in the Middle East… According to the Israel Bureau of Statistics from December 2021, 84% of Christians surveyed said they were satisfied with life in Israel.” — Matija Šerić, “Christians In The Middle East: A Persecuted And Forgotten People.”

The report further makes clear that Christians suffer, not just from “terrorists,” but Muslim state and society: “The legal political and social order in many Arab countries is a source of discrimination….[T]he system is hostile towards all non-Muslims, especially Christians. Christians are often not second or third but tenth class citizens, they suffer discrimination in the educational system, in the workplace, the community tries to ostracize them.” — Matija Šerić, “Christians In The Middle East: A Persecuted And Forgotten People.”

The following are among the murders and abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of March 2023:

Muslim Attacks on Churches

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Vivek Ramaswamy is willing to stand behind strong conservative principles By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on April 16th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/vivek_ramaswamy_is_willing_to_stand_behind_strong_conservative_principles.html

I realized why I like Vivek Ramaswamy when I heard Sen. Tim Scott announce that he’s created an exploratory committee to decide whether he should run for president. Scott speaks like a politician; Vivek speaks like a conservative. The former says what his consultants tell him to say; Vivek offers unfiltered insights into his thinking and is willing to say what politicians have been trained not to say. That’s clear from Vivek’s 25 goals as president and his honesty about so-called “transgenderism.”

Briefly, regarding Tim Scott, I admire him as a person: He’s a highly intelligent man who overcame a difficult childhood to become a successful businessman and politician, and he’s mostly conservative. However, Scott has been marinated in D.C. politics and, to my ear, he’s lost his authenticity. His video about his exploratory committee sounds like it went through two focus groups and three consultants before it finally came out of his mouth:

The same was true of Nikki Haley’s announcement that she was throwing her hat into the ring. In both cases, they as if you could open a 1970s-style catalog called “Politicians,” leaf through its pages for the “generic conservative” line, and find their pictures. (I may learn to think they’ve got what it takes but, for now, I’m reserving judgment.)

Trump wasn’t and isn’t like that. He is a complete original, an iconoclast who loves his country, makes great deals, and is unfettered by any leftist or Uniparty ideas—something that’s true despite his having been a Democrat. Heck, I was once a Democrat, too.

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Four authors to read before the woke censors come after them By Breason Jacak

Posted By on April 16th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/four_authors_to_read_before_the_woke_censors_come_after_them.html

Especially among conservative circles, it is easy to see how works published or written longer ago than the current year might come under harsh scrutiny from the editors of large publishing houses.  It is not the time to panic just yet.  However, with Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming becoming subject to rewrites and censorship as well as large retailers banning certain books from their platforms, it might be time to ponder what books you have been meaning to buy before you either cannot or it has been altered past the author’s intent.  Granted, while some of these books are politically controversial, it would be foolish to suppose that any such censorious instincts end at politics or the hot-button topic of the minute.

Therefore, with a focus on literature and entertainment, let’s dive in to four books I’d ask you to consider before to acquire while they are unmolested and purchasable.

Arthur Machen was a Welsh author who wrote some of the earliest entries of what evolved into the horror genre.  The collection here is the Oxford World Classics, which features the Great God Pan and others of his seminal works such as the White People and the Inmost Light.  Machen dabbled in esotericism and occultic studies, which seemingly scared him into a High Church Anglican, which lends his stories a definitive air of the sinister, with his Welsh background helping to inform the atmosphere of his works (often taking place in Wales).  Mr. Machen these days would not be in good company among modern authors and editors due to his reactionary views, his support of Francisco Franco, and the portrayals of women and the disabled (both physically and mentally).  These are works where once you have read them, you will see that not just a few writers in the mid twentieth-century borrowed or were heavily influenced by their author.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

‘Anti-racist’ Yale hosts a cheerleader for Jew-killing and racial hatred By Henry Kopel

Posted By on April 16th, 2023

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/anti-racist-yale-hosts-a-cheerleader-for-jew-killing-and-racial-hatred

Yale University makes no secret that among its top institutional priorities are “anti-racism” and diversity, equity, and inclusion . It is also no secret that both Yale’s administration and students have been vigilant — some say too vigilant — in condemning campus speech that challenges Yale’s DEI perspective.

In 2015, mobs of students stalked, shouted, and cursed at a married team of professors for days, merely because the wife had questioned whether the campus DEI office needed to police students’ Halloween costumes. Both professors, Nicholas and Erika Christakis , were eventually driven to resign from their administrative leadership positions — and Erika Christakis to resign from Yale altogether.

In 2021, a Yale law student was summoned before a diversity dean and threatened with adverse references that would preclude his bar admission for having jokingly used the phrase “trap house” in an emailed party invitation. Though of Native American heritage, the student was labeled a racist.

In 2022, a mob of over 100 Yale law students disrupted and sought to shut down a campus debate between a liberal atheist attorney and a conservative Christian lawyer. Police had to escort the speakers from the building.

Amid such efforts to sanitize the Yale campus against “harmful” speech, it may come as a surprise that Yale hosted last week an antisemitic speaker whose writings express hatred of Jews, Israel, and white people and explicitly justifies the murders of Jews and Israelis. Even worse, this hate-promoter’s lecture was endorsed by an online posting from Yale’s flagship DEI program, known as “Belonging at Yale.”

Specifically, on Thursday, April 6, Yale sponsored a talk by Houria Bouteldja on “France and Whiteness.” This is the same Bouteldja who in March 2012, just after radical Islamist Mohammed Merah massacred a Rabbi and three children in Toulouse, France, publicly declared that “Mohammed Merah is me.”

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Parental Choice is Proliferating Nationwide Should it become law, ECCA would enable millions of students trapped in unsafe, failing public schools to have a chance to enroll in private schools, without worrying about how to cover tuition. By Larry Sand

Posted By on April 16th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/15/parental-choice-is-proliferating-nationwide/

Just 100 days into the year, educational freedom seems to be unstoppable.

Wresting total control of America’s schoolchildren from the government-union educational complex is moving apace. 2021 was declared “The Year of Education Choice,” when 19 states enacted 32 new or expanded educational choice policies, and West Virginia became the first state in the country to establish universal school choice in the form of an education savings account (ESA). This type of choice allows parents to withdraw their children from public schools and receive a deposit of public funds into government-authorized savings accounts with restricted but multiple uses. Those funds can cover private school tuition and fees, online learning programs, private tutoring, community college costs, and other higher education expenses.

While many choice programs existed prior to the Mountain State’s Hope Scholarship, they all came with restrictions—typically limited to special ed students or children whose families were near the poverty line.

Last year, Arizona became the second state to jump aboard the “school choice for all” train. And in the first 100 or so days into 2023, Arkansas, Iowa, Utah, and Florida have followed suit. 

But wait, there is so much more!

Oklahoma, Ohio, Wyoming, Texas, Nebraska, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kansas, and Pennsylvania are working on school choice bills. In Georgia, Republicans in the state House recently helped defeat a choice bill, but it may come back for consideration next year.

Why is this happening at such breakneck speed now? Clearly the teacher union-led COVID-related shutdown mandates which closed schools all over the country is a major reason. But as Heritage Foundation scholars Jay Greene and Jason Bedrick explain, there is another factor. While they acknowledge that traditionally, school choice has been successful in red states, that is changing. Now, more and more families in suburban and rural areas are concerned about the kinds of values their children are being taught in public schools. “Radical academic content and school practices are not confined to large urban school districts on the coasts. Even in small towns across America’s heartland, public-school staffs have become emboldened to impose values on students that are strongly at odds with those preferred by parents.”

American Enterprise Institute fellow Robert Pondiscio sums it up succinctly, “School Choice Winning Streak? It’s Culture War, Stupid.”

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In a World Obsessed with Feelings, Whose Feelings Matter? Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on April 16th, 2023

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/26901/in-a-world-obsessed-with-feelings-whose-feelings

lindagoudsmit.com goudsmit.pundicity.com 

In a society that eliminates meritocracy by shifting its metrics from achievement to feelings, whose feelings actually matter? Let’s find out.

Competence is the mother of self-esteem. We know this is true by simply observing the delight of young children as they learn to dress themselves, feed themselves, or sound out their first words and realize they can read! Each achievement increases the child’s competence and enhances his developing sense of self. Achievement makes little Johnny feel proud of himself and good about himself. Let’s consider what incentivizes competence and achievement, and what doesn’t. Let’s also consider the motivations for incentivizing competence and the motivations for discouraging it.

If you want to know the motive, look at the result. What made America great was its cultural roots in meritocracy. Our society awarded achievement with upward mobility. It was called the American Dream, and America was the land where dreams came true. In every sector of society, little Johnny was encouraged to become an independent, autonomous, rational adult, capable of living a life of ordered liberty in our constitutional republic. In other words, little Johnny was encouraged to grow up and perpetuate the American dream. Not anymore.

In the past, each of little Johnny’s achievements were rewarded with praise when he was a little boy. As he grew older he earned grades in school that marked his achievement. Then he competed in sports with friends, and games with family. His grades were awarded certificates of achievement or advanced placement. His sports achievements were awarded with trophies, and wins in family games were rewarded with more praise.

The competitions all served to incentivize achievement. As Johnny got older he competed for jobs and for advancement. Winning and losing were part of everyone’s private and public life. Meritocracy was society’s infrastructure, rooted in achievement. Those who lost were encourage to try harder, work harder, study more, and try again. In the 1970s, ABC’s Wide World of Sports announcer Jim McKay, immortalized the words, “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”

BOOKS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

We Can’t Have Nice Things Without an allegiance to beauty, art degenerates into a caricature of itself. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on April 16th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/15/we-cant-have-nice-things/

Editor’s Note: This is a version of an essay that will appear in Up from Conservatism: Revitalizing the Right after a Generation of Decay, edited by Arthur Milikh, forthcoming from Encounter Books.

“Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.”
— Kingsley Amis

I thought about organizing this column around Kingsley Amis’ seemingly simple remark. How much forgotten wisdom is contained in those seven short words? And what profound application do they have to a moment in which ugliness has not only triumphed in our culture but is everywhere held up as something one must embrace as attractive? How many more fashion ads featuring hideous “fat-positive” females do we need? 

On second thought, though, I realized that I could give an abbreviated answer to the question implicit in my title in just three words: indifference, capitulation, kitsch. 

Let’s start with the indifference. Conservatives in the West long ago ceded culture to the Left. Culture, they felt, was not really serious. You can’t eat Rembrandt or the Ninth Symphony or Paradise Lost. You can’t make a payroll writing poetry or studying Botticelli or Herodotus. True, in 1780, John Adams wrote that “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy . . . in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” That sounds noble, but who still believes it? Not paid-up members of Conservatism, Inc. Quote that passage to them. Then watch them smile. 

It is the same smile they display when you quote Andrew Breitbart’s observation that “politics is downstream from culture.” They might nod. They might say they agree. But how do they act? More or less like Medea in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: “Video meliora,” said that unhappy damsel to herself, “proboque, deteriora sequor”: “I see the better path and approve: I follow the worse.” 

Back in 1973, Irving Kristol wrote an essay called “On Capitalism and the Democratic Idea.” In the course of that essay, Kristol touched upon the conservative indifference to the claims of culture. “For two centuries,” he wrote 

the very important people who managed the affairs of this society could not believe in the importance of ideas—until one day they were shocked to discover that their children, having been captured and shaped by certain ideas, were either rebelling against their authority or seceding from their society. The truth is that ideas are all-important. The massive and seemingly solid institutions of any society—the economic institutions, the political institutions, the religious institutions—are always at the mercy of the ideas in the heads of the people who populate these institutions. The leverage of ideas is so immense that a slight change in the intellectual climate can and will—perhaps slowly but nevertheless inexorably—twist a familiar institution into an unrecognizable shape. 

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Mike Pompeo Makes His 2024 Decision Sarah Arnold Sarah Arnold

Posted By on April 15th, 2023

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/04/14/mike-pompeo-announces-2024-presidential-run-n2621998

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decided whether to enter the race for the 2024 White House. 

On Friday, Pompeo announced that he would not run for president against former President Trump during an interview on “Special Report.”

The Republican said that he and his wife pondered the decision for a few months but ultimately decided it was not the right time for their family. 

“I have made a decision,” Pompeo said. “We have prayerfully concluded we are not going to join the race in 2024. While we care deeply about America and the issues I’ve been talking about for the past year and a half and frankly for decades matter an awful lot, this isn’t our moment.”

Pompeo was asked if his former boss, a top contender for the GOP nomination, had any weight on his decision, which he denied but took a few digs at him.

“I think Americans are thirsting for people making arguments, not just tweets. I think they’re looking for someone who can clearly articulate their vision for what parents ought to be doing to help their kids be successful in schools and how we take back crime from our streets and cities,” Pompeo said while speaking to Fox News. “I don’t know if that will end up being President Trump that the American people choose or if that’s who our party will choose to be its nominee. But I’m hopeful it will be those debates about real arguments, things that really matter.”

However, he insisted that he still plans to support the Republican nominee no matter who it may be. 

In recent months, Pompeo had traveled to a series of early-voting states as his potential run was expected. But, in a statement, he didn’t rule out the idea of never running, saying more opportunities would come about.

“There remain many more opportunities for which the timing might be more fitting as presidential leadership becomes even more necessary,” Pompeo said. 

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19 Times Democrats And DOJ Deliberately Politicized Law Enforcement By: Tristan Justice

Posted By on April 15th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/14/19-times-democrats-and-doj-deliberately-politicized-law-enforcement/

Here’s a roundup of the DOJ deploying federal resources to do Democrats’ bidding.

Amid calls from former President Donald Trump to “defund” the partisan Department of Justice and FBI, which treats its friends above the law and its enemies below it, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer defended the agencies.

But a review of the agencies’ track records shows them to be indefensible. Here are 19 times Democrats and DOJ politicized the rule of law, deploying federal resources to do Democrats’ bidding.

1. Infiltration of Catholic Parishes

House Republican Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday after a whistleblower revealed the agency is targeting Catholic parishes.

In February, former Special Agent Kyle Seraphin revealed that “the FBI’s Richmond Division would like to protect Virginians from the threat of ‘white supremacy,’ which it believes has found a home within Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass.”

“The document assesses with ‘high confidence’ the FBI can mitigate the threat of Radical-Traditionalist Catholics by recruiting sources within the Catholic Church,” Seraphin reported.

Jordan’s letter to Wray Tuesday said the FBI sought to use local religious organizations as ‘new avenues for tripwire and source development.’”

2. FBI Targeted Parents for Domestic Terrorism

Weeks before the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, in which parental rights in education were the centerpiece of Republican campaigns, the FBI deployed counterterrorism resources on parents who raised issues at school board meetings. Parents identified as extremists by FBI activists were labeled with “threat tags” under Attorney General Merrick Garland’s guidance. Whistleblower documents suggest Garland lied about the scandal when testifying before the House Judiciary Committee that October.

In March, the committee published an interim report on the debacle concluding the Biden administration had “no legitimate basis” to crack down on parents as terrorists.

Garland has refused lawmakers’ demands to repeal the controversial memorandum, according to the committee.

3. Crossfire Hurricane

The campaign to impeach former President Donald Trump began well before his 2017 inauguration.

Deep-state officials within the FBI concocted plans known as Crossfire Hurricane to frame Trump as a Russian agent after the Republican businessman secured the GOP presidential nomination. Within four months of Trump’s first term, a special counsel was appointed to investigate allegations of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. After the more than two-year special counsel investigation run entirely by Democrats with unlimited resources, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team found not one person, let alone Trump himself, colluded with the Kremlin.

4. Hillary’s Emails

While the DOJ investigated the Trump campaign in 2016, the agency gave cover to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her private email server scandal.

The FBI told journalists there was no evidence that a foreign power reviewed Clinton’s emails improperly stored on a private server. According to a report from the DOJ inspector general in 2018, however, texts show they almost certainly did, “at least one of them classified,” as Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi wrote.