RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-02-120313.html

The influential bi-monthly The American Interest devotes the front section of its March/April issue to the end of American Exceptionalism. As Mark Twain said about rumors of his own death, it’s exaggerated. All depends on demographics: what has made the United States radically different from all other big industrial nations during the past generation is a fertility rate above replacement.

After the 2008 crisis, the United States’ fertility dipped below the replacement line. Whether that continues or reverses depends, in turn, on America’s religious character, and that is the least predictable facet of American life.

There are many good arguments against the idea of American Exceptionalism, but there has been – until very recently- one outstanding argument in favor. The United States is the last remaining Christian nation in the industrial world, and was until 2010 the only industrial nation with fertility above replacement.

That is an issue of fact; the American Interest addresses ideology. Prof Walter McDougall’s entry claims that ”Exceptionalism” itself was an invention of Cold War propaganda that the Pilgrim Fathers never had in mind. Another piece by Nils Gilman states that all nations have a ”master narrative” of their uniqueness to which the United States is, well, no exception. And UCLA’s Peter Berger argues that the United States used to be exceptional but isn’t any more. Two of the three pieces start by quoting President Barack Obama’s 2009 comment that the US is exceptional the same way that Greece or any other country is exceptional.

There is a good deal of truth in all three accounts. During most of US history, Americans had no vision of a City on a Hill, as 17th-century Massachusetts governor John Winthrop paraphrased the New Testament words. Prof McDougall correctly points out that the image came into rhetorical focus during World War II and the Cold War. That does not prove it false, however.

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/mar/11/amen-history-channels-bible/

NEW YORK, March 11, 2013 — Well, it could have been much worse, and in some ways it was better than expected.I missed the first part of the History Channel’s series on the Bible, that begins at, well, “The Beginning,” as in Genesis, but I caught up to it last night by the time Moses, not Yasser Arafat, reaches the Promised Land, yes, Israel.

Those of us who study the Hebrew Bible daily and religiously but are not necessarily religious, indulging in the forbidden cheeseburger after study and prayer or the ballgame we may watch after Sabbath services, were afraid that the series may take too many liberties in this, the age of political correctness.

ABC-TV, for example, once tried to re-do Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 “The Ten Commandments,” but forgot to mention that the people Moses was leading were Hebrews. They could have been anybody in that pasteurized version.

In this “Bible,” at least the script was clear enough.

But I must admit that even in this telling it was difficult to imagine anybody as Moses except Charlton Heston or Pharaoh as anyone except Yul Brynner.

Was this version accurate? I’ll let our doctors of divinity get into that, but as for me, not bad, and showing Samson as a black man was a good touch. Jews have become distilled and we do trace our lineage back to Abraham (some would say his grandson Jacob and the 12 Tribes, specifically Judah, hence Judaism), but we come from a mixture. We never were “the white man.”

The best part, for me as a casual observer, was that there was no hiding the fact that God promised the land of Israel to the Jewish people. Period. End of story. But as we know, this story is without end. Read he headlines and the Hebrew Bible itself foreshadows everything we read in the papers today.

But whoa! Where’s this been all these years? Even Israeli politicians are afraid to mention Israel’s indelible Biblical connection for fear of rocking the boat.

Frankly, I had expected “the other side of the story,” namely that the Arabs enjoy an equal claim to the Land, and if they do, it’s political, and not Biblical. The History Channel stuck to the Bible, the Hebrew Bible…told, of course, in King’s English, and there is even more to this to prove King Solomon’s maxim that there is nothing new under the sun:

http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-dissidents-jailed-post-arab-spring-crackdown-184143623.html
CHRISTA CASE BRYANT
Saudi dissidents jailed – a post Arab Spring crackdown?
A judge recently sentenced two activists to a decade in prison and ordered their civil rights organization, which lobbied against government corruption, to be shut down.

Saudi Arabia’s decision this weekend to sentence two of the country’s most prominent human rights activists to 10 and 11 years in prison, respectively, has sparked a surge of discontent among the kingdom’s reformers. In just one indication, an economist-blogger’s poll on Twitter drew 10,000 responses, 85 percent of them opposed to the decision.

While many activists appear undeterred, the sentencing of Mohammad al-Qahtani, together with that of Abdullah al-Hamid, cofounders of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), represents a significant step backward in reform efforts.

The small opening for reform created by King Abdullah when he took over in 2005 has been gradually closing since the Arab Spring, says Prof. Gregory Gause, a scholar of Saudi Arabia at the University of Vermont.

“The last two years have seen a closing of what had been a very small opening of what had been acceptable discourse in Saudi Arabia,” says Professor Gause, who chairs UVM’s political science department. “I do think it’s a signal … it’s part of the post-Arab Spring Saudi crackdown.”

http://www.steynonline.com/5465/the-racist-and-the-unknown-man My friend Lars Hedegaard is a dapper, courtly publisher and editor just turned 70. Like many Scandinavians, he speaks very evenly modulated English, but, insofar as I can tell, his Danish is no more excitable. A cultured, civilized fellow, he was for most of his life a man of the left, as are the […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/obama_to_nominate_sharia_supporter_illegal_immigrant_advocate_as_labor_secretary.html President Obama reportedly intends to nominate in-your-face radical leftist lawyer Thomas Perez as his next Secretary of Labor. Now an assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, Perez is a former top aide to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and possibly a perjurer. Perez led the Obama administration’s assault on voter […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/03/young_moroccan_apostate_on_the_arab_spring_and_islam.html The invaluable blog Gates of Vienna, has translated the Die Welt interview of a thoughtful, courageous 22 year-old Moroccan “apostate” from Islam, Kassim al-Ghasali. Requisitely threatened with death because of his openly professed rejection of the Muslim creed, al-Ghasali fled Morocco in February, 2011, and now lives in exile in Switzerland   Young Mr. […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/the_obama_credo.html

I believe that a child who pretends his pastry is a gun poses an imminent danger, but 5,000 criminal illegal aliens released from jail enhance public safety.

I believe that New Yorkers must be protected from the risk of drinking 16 ounces of soda, but exposed to the risk of bringing Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law for a civil trial blocks from Ground Zero.

I believe that every American child deserves to be loved and cherished, except for certain 16-year-olds who deserve to be killed by drones.

I believe that a Muslim woman who applauds 9/11 and admires Hitler deserves a State Department award for her courage, at least until someone reads her tweets.

I believe that the federal government should confiscate guns from law-abiding Americans, but give thousands of guns to Mexican drug gangs to kill our Border Patrol agents.

I believe the president should stay up late partying with Jay-Z and Beyonce, but hit the sack when our Libyan consulate is under attack and our Ambassador is missing.

I believe that plastic bags are a menace to the earth, but Iran’s nuclear weapons are no big deal.

I believe that mankind controls the weather, but is helpless to get a job.

THE AUTHOR WAS TOUTED AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO CHUCK HAGEL…….
Michele Flournoy Presents Bipartisan Option for Secretary of Defense
www.breitbart.com/…/Michele-Flournoy-Presents-Bipartisan-Option-…Cached
Feb 5, 2013 – With Chuck Hagel’s chances for securing the position of Secretary of Defense decreasing more each passing day, Michele Flournoy may be the …
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324128504578346332458725010.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
Ms. Flournoy, a former Pentagon official, is a senior adviser at the Boston Consulting Group and a co-founder of the Center for a New American Security.

The United States rarely conducts military operations alone, so it is in America’s interests to ensure that its allies and partners are well-equipped, well-trained and able to operate effectively with U.S. forces. Key to achieving this objective—and to helping other nations keep their neighborhoods peaceful in the first place—is this country’s ability to export weapons technologies.

Defense exports also are vital for the economy. They can help America maintain its industrial base and technological edge, not only in weaponry but also in vital civilian sectors such as software, aerospace, steel and electronics. Thousands of jobs depend on these industries, and so does America’s capacity to ensure that its warfighters remain the best-equipped in the world.

As straightforward as the national-security and economic arguments are, there is a fundamental dilemma: How does America make military technologies available to its global partners without also allowing them to reach adversaries who would turn them against us?

Over the past six decades, Washington has developed a system that applies one-size-fits-all bureaucratic requirements to defense exports. The system is plagued by maddeningly lethargic timetables for approving technology transfers. It handles airplane windshield wipers essentially the same way it handles air-to-air missiles. It forces American companies and foreign partner militaries to await separate approvals for every latch, wire and lug nut on an F-16 fighter jet—even though the U.S. government has already approved the export of the whole aircraft.

When I served as undersecretary of defense for policy from 2009-11, no issue consistently generated greater frustration and anger among my foreign counterparts than U.S. export controls.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323826704578354070931017596.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

I picture the Chinese hacker who spent part of last year perusing internal Wall Street Journal emails as a scrawny 23-year-old lieutenant with bad English, bad acne and a uniform that is a half-size too large for his frame. He works for a branch of the People’s Liberation Army known as Unit 61398. His office is a nondescript building near Datong Road in Shanghai.I call him Feng. I wonder what Feng does for fun.

I also have a mental picture of the censor who decides which articles or editions of The Wall Street Journal to ban in China. In my imagination she’s a matronly woman with good English named Mei. Mei works for CNPIEC—the state-owned China National Publications Import & Export Corporation—which has offices near Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium.

There’s a pond next to the stadium. I imagine Mei sometimes takes her lunch breaks on a bench by the water’s edge, quietly reading unredacted copies of Western publications.

The world knows about Unit 61398 thanks to a report last month by the Virginia-based Mandiant Corporation, which traced the source of many of the hacks into U.S. companies, including the Journal, to the Datong Road address. And the Journal knows CNPIEC’s censorship because we take note of what gets banned or torn out of our newspapers when they are distributed in China.

In 2006, a year’s worth of censorship amounted to eight articles being torn out of the paper. In 2012, the censorship was up more than 13-fold. Maps that treat Taiwan as a country: out. Articles critical of Beijing’s policies toward Tibetans or Uighurs: out. A review of two books about Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and the famine he caused: out. Articles about intrigues at the top level of the Communist Party: out.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324178904578338032616977010.html?mod=opinion_newsreel On Aug. 18, 2012, Dr. Cyril Karabus—a 77-year-old oncologist from South Africa—was arrested during a stopover at Dubai International Airport, as he was returning from his son’s wedding in Toronto. Formerly the senior pediatrician at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Capetown, Dr. Karabus had last visited Dubai in 2002, when he treated patients […]