RECAPTURING HIGHER EDUCATION On the plan to transform New College of Florida into a classical liberal arts institution. Christopher Rufo

https://www.city-journal.org/recapturing-higher-education

The most significant political story of the past half-century is the activist Left’s “long march through the institutions.” Beginning in the 1960s, left-wing activists and intellectuals, inspired by theorists such as Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci and New Left philosopher Herbert Marcuse, made a concerted effort to embed their ideas in education, government, philanthropy, media, and other important sectors.

This process came to spectacular fruition following the 2020 death of George Floyd, when it seemed that every prestige institution in the United States got busy advancing the same ideological line on race, gender, and culture—which, whether they knew it or not, mimicked the precise themes that the old radicals had originally proposed. 

The long march through the institutions, in other words, was complete.

But conservatives, too, have updated their playbook. They have read their Gramsci and have begun to understand that ideological capture poses a grave threat to the American system. President Donald Trump shook conservatives out of their complacency with instinctual, if sometimes crude, cultural countermeasures. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has built on this approach, offering a sophisticated policy agenda for protecting families against captured bureaucracies.

Last week, DeSantis raised the stakes and proposed, for the first time, a strategy for reversing the long march through the institutions, beginning with what Marcuse believed was the initial revolutionary institution: the university. The governor appointed a slate of new trustees to the board of the New College of Florida, a notoriously left-wing campus, similar to that of Evergreen State in Olympia, Washington. DeSantis tasked the new board with transforming it into, to quote the governor’s chief of staff, the “Hillsdale of the South”—in other words, a classical liberal arts college that provides a distinctly traditional brand of education and scholarship.

Don’t buy Biden’s ‘surprise’ — classified documents were moved at least twice Jonathan Turley

https://nypost.com/2023/01/11/dont-buy-bidens-surprise-classified-documents-were-moved-at-least-twice/

With the reported discovery of a second batch of highly classified documents connected to President Biden, the decisions of Attorney General Merrick Garland are fast moving from inexplicable to incomprehensible.

Garland was presumably briefed that classified documents were discovered in Joe Biden’s old office on Nov. 2. He also presumably knew about the Biden documents when he appointed a special counsel to investigate the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago 16 days later.

At the time of the appointment of Jack Smith, some of us noted the inexplicable refusal of Garland to appoint a special counsel to look into alleged Biden influence peddling and other crimes.

Garland continued to refuse such an appointment even as he justified the appointment of Smith on the basis that Donald Trump was running for the presidency. Joe Biden is the president. What is the difference?

Biden, meanwhile, is feigning ignorance, simply saying he was “surprised” the documents were there.

By not discussing the content of the documents, Biden minimizes his vulnerability to charges of obstruction or false statements. He can simply declare “surprise,” knowing that many in the media will welcome his silence as they spin the scandal.

 The documents were discovered six days before the midterm elections at a think tank affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania.

Despite the lack of information, the press and pundits have already declared there is no real national security danger and certainly no comparison to Mar-a-Lago. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) declared, “There is no comparison. They were in a locked closet. They were not accessible.”

So that is the standard? A locked closet? The Mar-a-Lago storage room was locked and later the security was enhanced at the request of the FBI.

It is fair to note that Trump and his staff are accused of false statements and obstruction. However, that does not change the same alleged crime of unlawful removal and possession.

Amnesty International’s latest excuse to accuse Israel of ‘apartheid’ By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-728435

Amnesty International doesn’t need an excuse to bash Israel, regardless of the makeup of the ruling coalition in Jerusalem. Indeed, it makes no bones about its view that since the state’s establishment in 1948, “successive governments have created and maintained a system of laws, policies and practices designed to oppress and dominate Palestinians.”

But the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is back in power, this time solely with right-wing and religious partners, makes the country that the UK-based “human rights” NGO loves to hate particularly tempting as a target. The hysteria at home and abroad surrounding the appointment of firebrand Itamar Ben-Gvir as national security minister provided the bullseye.

Interestingly, it wasn’t Ben-Gvir’s January 3 visit to the Temple Mount that spurred Amnesty into action. Perhaps the radical-leftist organization decided to sit back and let the outrage that its liberal counterparts around the world were expressing over the event take center stage.

In any case, none of the predictions about the turmoil that the Otzma Yehudit Party leader’s short excursion to the holy site was likely to provoke came true. Amnesty, therefore, maybe did well by waiting a few days before joining the fray with customary vengeance.

The opportunity arose on Sunday, when Ben-Gvir announced that he’d ordered Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai to authorize officers, in the course of their work, to remove Palestinian flags from public places. The minister’s measure came in response to the way in which the banner was used last week to celebrate the release from prison of Arab terrorist Karim Younis.

Younis spent 40 years in jail for kidnapping and killing IDF Cpl. Avraham Bromberg on the Golan Heights in 1983. Upon his arrival on January 5 in his hometown of Ara in the Haifa district, he was hailed as a hero.

What Caused the Political Hysteria? Karma, Nemesis, payback . . . and all that stuff. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/11/what-caused-the-political-hysteria/

The Left has gone mad over Donald J. Trump—past, present, and future. 

The current Democratic Party and NeverTrump “conservatives” assumed that Trump was and remains so obviously toxic that they do not have to define exactly what his evil entails. 

Accordingly, they believe that any means necessary are justified to stop him. And furthermore, these zealots, when out of power, insist such extraordinary measures should not be emulated and institutionalized by their opponents, much less ever boomeranged back upon their creators. 

In this context, the Republicans retaking control of  the House of Representatives once again raises the question whether they should reply in kind. 

Given the current investigation following the Mar-a-Lago raid, should there also be a mirror-image special prosecutor to examine President Biden’s lost stash of classified documents in his insecure office following his vice presidency? 

Can House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) ever be considered too inflammatory, given that his predecessor, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tore up the president’s State of the Union address on national television? 

How many Democratic House members should be denied committee assignments to remind the Congress that Pelosi’s rejection of Republican nominees was a terrible precedent? 

How many congressional subpoenas with threats of criminal prosecution and performance-art arrests should be issued to Democratic politicos to stop the criminalization of political differences? 

In our current age, will all former president’s private homes, closets, and drawers now be subject to FBI raids to ensure that “classified” documents were not wrongly stored there? 

Are Joe Biden’s current homes also a logical target, given his sloppy handling of classified foreign policy papers—eerily reminiscent of an abandoned laptop belonging to son Hunter Biden and daughter Ashley Biden’s lost diary? 

Was it ever a good idea to impeach a first-term president the moment he lost his party’s majority in the House—but without any hope of a conviction in the Senate? Would such a similar impeachment send a warning to Biden to honor his oath of office and start enforcing U.S. immigration law? 

Does a phone call now an impeachment make, on the grounds that Trump mixed domestic politics with foreign policy? 

But was Trump’s Ukrainian call that much different from Barack Obama’s 2012 quid pro quo in Seoul, South Korea, where he asked the Russian president to convey a deal to Vladmir Putin: stay calm and give Obama space during his reelection bid while Obama in turn would be flexible on missile defense. 

WHO IS THE LIBERAL? SYDNEY WILLIAMS

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

The word liberal reminds one of Humpty Dumpty’s proclamation. It means different things to different people. The word is polysemous. To the Left it means big government, which actively supports social change. To the Right it refers to less government interference, the endorsement of individual rights, civil liberties, and free markets. The word stems from the Latin, liber, meaning free or unimpeded. In Lewis Carroll’s story, the word that caused the skirmish was glory, when used as a verb. “They’ve a temper – some of them, particularly verbs,” Humpty Dumpty says to a puzzled Alice. The word liberal is not temperamental (at least as far as I know), but it can self-camouflage, to ambush the unsuspecting.

Over the years, the Left has usurped the word. so that for most the word refers to those who prefer a large role for government in their lives, while conservatives have become deplorables, birthers, conspirators, or just plain racists or right-wing nuts. We on the right should seize the word back. In his 1953 book The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk wrote of Edmund Burke (1729-1797), of how he defended the liberties of Englishmen against their king and of Americans against king and parliament. He defended those liberties not because they were innovations, “…but because they were ancient prerogatives, guaranteed by immemorial usage. Burke was liberal because he was conservative.” (Highlights mine.)

It is amusing to consider how the definition of liberal has morphed over time, so that today’s social liberals consider themselves the sole owners of the word, “even as,” Daniel Henninger wrote in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, “they surrender to the state an array of long assumed freedoms – of opinion, speech, and privacy.” Classical liberals believe that such rights, along with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” are natural; they are God-given. The purpose of government is to secure and ensure those rights, not to dictate social behavior. 

A Call from Alexander Hamilton By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/a_call_from_alexander_hamilton.html

In light of the dismaying set of events that has put our country at great risk, it is intriguing to read the words of Alexander Hamilton to George Clinton dated February 13, 1778.  Written from Valley Forge immediately after his arrival at headquarters, Hamilton expressed his deep concern about the “degeneracy of representation in the great council of America.”

Hamilton notes that each day Americans “see and feel, that there is not so much wisdom in a certain body, as there ought to be, and as the success of our affairs absolutely demands.”

Many members of it are no doubt men in every respect, fit for the trust, but this cannot be said of it as a body. Folly, caprice, a want of foresight, comprehension and dignity, characterise the general tenor of their actions.

Of relevant concern to 21st century Americans is Hamilton’s assertion that

Their conduct with respect to the army especially is feeble, indecisive and improvident — insomuch, that we are reduced to a more terrible situation than you can conceive.

Furthermore, “[this] has produced such carelessness and indifference to the service, as is subversive of every officer-like quality.”

Consider how the current American military brass is betraying the United States by “embracing leftist racism and anti-Americanism.  Their radicalism is pushing conservatives out of the armed forces while undermining unit cohesion and troop morale.”  Critical Race Theory (CRT) has infiltrated the military and dividing members of the armed forces into opposing camps of ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed’ [.]” 

Defense Secretary­­­­­­­­ Lloyd Austin is an advocate of anti-American views and has required CRT and the 1619 Project as part of the military training programs.

Moreover, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has worked to “divide and weaken the military by bringing the Black Lives Matter curriculum of anti-white and anti-American hate into its ranks.”

In 2020, Admiral Michael Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations vowed to eliminate “systemic racism.” 

Although Marxism is the animating feature of the above, Alexander Hamilton’s words highlight that “they have disgusted the army by repeated instances of the most whimsical favouritism in their promotions; and by an absurd prodigality of rank to foreigners and to the meanest staff of the army. They have not been able to summon resolution enough to withstand the impudent importunity and vain boasting of foreign pretenders [.]”

Palestinians Recruit Minors as Terrorists, Then Condemn Israel for Shooting ‘Innocent Children’ by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19313/palestinians-children-terrorists

Palestinian terror groups are recruiting minors to carry out terrorist attacks while Palestinian leaders and international organizations are screaming that “innocent children are being killed.”

The Palestinian Authority… glorifies terrorists and rewards them and their families with monthly stipends — essentially a “jobs program” that solicits murder….

Those who send minors to carry out terror attacks should be held responsible for committing a crime against the Palestinians, for deliberately placing their children in danger, and not only Israel.

Ayyad, who was killed during violent clashes with Israeli soldiers, had even written a will expressing his desire to die as a “martyr.”

“I’m happy that God has fulfilled one of my dreams: martyrdom.” So much for being an “innocent child.”

Palestinian children are brainwashed against Israel from the cradle and are deliberately placed in harm’s way, while the UN and the rest of the world look the other way.

The UN members who held an emergency session to discuss the visit by a Jew to the Temple Mount are the biggest hypocrites of all. These supposed purveyors of virtue do not want to acknowledge that the Palestinian recruitment of children as soldiers is the real threat to peace and security, and not a Jew walking on the grounds of a holy site in Jerusalem.

It would have been better for the UN and all those who rushed to condemn Ben-Gvir’s visit had they called an emergency session to see why Palestinian children are being sent by their own people to die in clashes with the Israeli army.

It would also have been better had the UN held a special session to discuss the Palestinian leadership’s responsibility for its ongoing incitement against Israel and encouraging minors to seek death as “martyrs.”

The blood of the next Palestinian child killed in battle will be on the hands of the liars in the corridors of the UN and the offices of major newspapers around the world, which continue to ignore Palestinian atrocities against their own people.

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) was quick to hold an emergency session on January 5 because a Jew dared to walk on the holiest site in Judaism, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Two days earlier, that Jew, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, had made a quiet, 13-minute tour of the site.

Ex-Uber Driver Who Murdered Eight People in NYC Was in the U.S. on a Diversity Visa By Robert Spencer

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/01/10/ex-uber-driver-who-murdered-eight-people-in-nyc-was-in-the-u-s-on-a-diversity-visa-n1660529

After he was admitted to the United States on a diversity visa, Sayfullo Saipov demonstrated his gratitude to the land that had welcomed him by murdering eight people in New York City on Halloween night in 2017 by driving a truck along a bike path. Now, all these years later, he is finally on trial. On Monday, he showed that he was not in the least repentant. As far as he is concerned, he has no reason to be. He sees himself as a soldier in a war that only one side admits is being waged. The lessons here are right on the surface for anyone who wants to learn them, but whether or not anyone in this administration has any interest in doing so remains doubtful.

Saipov’s attorney David Patton said, “And as we sit here today, he still believes that, he still believes the ISIS messaging and he still believes it was God’s will that he do what he did.” This was in line with what Saipov said at a pre-trial hearing back in 2018: “The judgments that are made here are not important for me. They are not Allah’s judgments. The Islamic State, in order to impose sharia (Islamic law) on Earth, is leading a war.” He explained that this war was not being waged to gain territory or economic power, but in order to “impose Sharia on earth.”

Patton admitted that Saipov carried out the attack and said his act was “senseless.” He added, “There is no excuse for what he did and we will not offer one to you.” Nevertheless, CNN reports that Saipov “has pleaded not guilty in federal court to 28 counts, including eight counts of murder, 18 counts of attempted murder and other terrorism charges in connection with the deadliest terror attack in New York since 9/11.”

2 American Revolutions A revolution in American education made America; a counter-revolution in education is un-making America. by Robert Curry

https://www.frontpagemag.com/2-american-revolutions/

Evidently, the Chinese are actually not the source of the curse “May you live in interesting times.”  But whatever its source, that curse seems to have landed on us in double strength.  Our time is more than interesting—it is revolutionary.  The revolution you and I are living through is a counter-revolution; it is un-doing the America which was made at the founding.

A serious scholar has presented the un-making of America with startling clarity in a Frontpage article, and another serious scholar has told the story of the making of America with unprecedented precision and in astonishing detail.  Together, they tell the tale of where we are, where we came from, and, unless we manage to change America’s direction, where America is headed.

If you missed Bruce Thornton’s recent posting here at Frontpage about what has happened to education in America, I encourage you to read it.

“Today our educational institutions are grubby, rent-seeking businesses, and propaganda organs for illiberal, incoherent ideologies based on the “higher nonsense” that has captured “higher education,” and from there trickled down into K-12 schools.”

That was not the case when Thornton’s university teaching career began in 1977. Today, a serious scholar like Bruce Thornton is no longer welcome.  Real scholars have been replaced by propagandists, as America’s universities abandoned their reason for existing.

What is astonishing about this transformation is how quickly it happened.  In the span of a single career, America’s educational institutions were transformed.  The “higher nonsense” replaced the best that has been known and thought so rapidly that it was fully accomplished before most people noticed.  Americans continued donating to their alma mater without realizing it was no longer even the same kind of place it had been when they were there.

The consequences of this revolution are grim, terrible, horrific: the un-making of America. 

Germany Arrests Iranian National Planning ‘Islamist-Motivated’ Chemical Attack Meanwhile, nearly 500 Iranians have been killed amid the deadly crackdown at home. by Vijeta Uniyal

https://www.frontpagemag.com/germany-arrests-iranian-national-planning-islamist-motivated-chemical-attack/

German police have arrested an Iranian national on suspicion of planning an “Islamist-motivated” chemical attack. The alleged 32-year-old Iranian jihadi, along with a suspected accomplice, was caught near the western German city of Dortmund as he tried to precure highly-toxic cyanide and ricin for a terrorist attack, German newspaper Die Welt reported Sunday.

Police said in a statement that the Iranian national is “suspected of having prepared a serious act of violence that endangers the state by procuring cyanide and ricin to commit an Islamist-motivated attack.”

The suspected Islamist duo was literally caught with their pants down. The two men were seen being “whisked away into a police vehicle in their underpants and jackets wrapped around them in a makeshift manner,” the German daily noted.

The news reports indicate that the Iranian man might have gotten his hands on toxic chemicals required for a terror attack. “Specialists wearing anti-contamination suits were seen carrying evidence out of the man’s home,” the AP News reported.

Berlin-based Die Welt reported the details of the German counter-terrorism operation:

Anti-terror investigators have arrested a 32-year-old man in Castrop-Rauxel in the northern Ruhr region, who is said to have plotted an Islamist attack. The Iranian national is suspected of having acquired the toxins cyanide and ricin for the crime. This was confirmed by the police departments of Düsseldorf, Recklinghausen and Münster on early Sunday morning.

On Saturday night, the investigators carried [out the raid] at around midnight. The scene was cordoned off over a large area. Police, fire services and rescue workers were at the site in large numbers. “We received a serious warning that prompted the police to act that night,” said North Rhine-Westphalian [State] Interior Minister Herbert Reul (…) said.