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France’s Macron wins re-election, dodges political earthquake By Mimosa Spencer , Layli Foroudi and Tassilo Hummel

Posted By on April 24th, 2022

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/macron-or-le-pen-france-faces-stark-choice-president-2022-04-24/

Le Pen admits defeat
Macron ministers hail win, vow to listen more to voters
Macron can expect little to no grace period
Opposition turns focus to June parliamentary elections

PARIS, April 24 (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron defeated his far-right rival Marine Le Pen on Sunday by a comfortable margin, securing a second term and heading off what would have been a political earthquake.

Cheers of joy erupted as the results appeared on a giant screen at the Champ de Mars park at the foot of the Eiffel tower, where Macron supporters waved French and EU flags. People hugged each other, danced and chanted “Macron!”.

European leaders also welcomed the news that pro-European Union Macron and not nationalist eurosceptic Le Pen had won.

Pollsters projected Macron securing around 58.5% of the vote. Such estimates are normally accurate but may be fine-tuned as official results come in.

“I am very relieved – it had looked very close and populism was at our door,” 42-year old Alessandro Paleni told Reuters at the Macron rally. But he stressed the president faced a difficult task given how many votes went to the far-right.

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A Passover Reflection on the Ukraine War Michael Galak

Posted By on April 24th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/ukraine/2022/04/a-passover-reflection-on-the-ukraine-war/

This year’s Passover, what Gentiles sometimes call Exodus, is being celebrated amidst fears the beginning of a third world war is playing out on Ukrain’s flatlands. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, what comes to mind — my mind at any rate — is a connection between the ancient rebellion of Jewish slaves with the struggle of the Ukrainian people against Russian aggression.

The parallels are astounding, despite a long and heated tradition of enmity between two peoples. I am acutely conscious of the blood-soaked history of Jewish-Ukrainian relations, if one can call it that. This is history drenched in Jewish blood:  Koliivshchina rebellion, Khmelnitzky pogroms, SS murders, Babi Yar massacre – to mention just some of the crimes that figure in the mind-numbing magnitude of Jewish persecution, suffering and slaughter. These masacres are condemned to live in infamy in Jewish memory no less than Auschwitz and the Nazis’ other death mills. They are indelibly engraved in the voluminous history of Ukrainian anti-Semitism and I have no right to ignore the massacres or forgive their perpetrators. Ironically, many Ukrainians recognized the value of having the Jewish community as part of Ukrainian society despite anti-Semitism being an integral part of the national psyche. This is reflected in a Ukrainian saying, Yak bida, tak do Zhida – “If in trouble go to a Jew for help”. To put it mildly, Jewish-Ukrainian relations were far from cordial for a long, long time.

And then something happened. Ukraine, traditionally anti-Semitic Ukraine, voted overwhelmingly for a Jewish man, the descendant of a Holocaust survivor, to be their president in time of peace and, as it happens, in war as well. One can argue that Volodymyr Zelensky’s victory was either a protest vote against Ukraine’s all-pervading corruption or, perhaps equally, a reflection of a newly evolved political sophistication. Be that as it may, the unwillingness of the Ukrainians to have Jews as their fellow citizens and neighbors is held by a mere 5 per cent of the population, according to a recent Pew Centre poll. This is a level of acceptance and tolerance which the same polling found to be the highest in all Europe. The same survey indicated that 13 per cent of Russians and 32 per cent of Armenians are not prepared to have a Jew marry into their families or even as a neighbor.

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Black Clergy Call on Corporations to Distance Themselves From Black Lives Matter By Chris Queen

Posted By on April 24th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2022/04/23/black-clergy-call-on-corporations-to-distance-themselves-from-black-lives-matter-n1592140

Since the advent of Black Lives Matter in the mid-2010s and especially since the organization went front and center in 2020, corporations have fallen head over heels for BLM.

It’s an easy way for corporations to virtue-signal, and there’s plenty of pressure on companies to show their support or face accusations of racism, true or not.

Corporations have fallen for it hook, line, and sinker, but there’s a movement afoot to call on companies to back away from Black Lives Matter. A group of black clergy leaders approached some corporate headquarters in Atlanta this week, urging them to distance themselves from BLM.

“Concerned Communities for America, a non-profit led by Black clergy, delivered a pledge for signing to the headquarters of Papa John’s Pizza and Coca Cola in Atlanta on Wednesday to renounce BLM’s charity operation and the movement’s push to defund police,” reports ADN America. “The pledge asks the corporations to renounce their past support and donations to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which has been embroiled in scandals over the use of donations for lavish personal expenses.”

Leaders of this non-profit seek to make corporations aware of the difference between the sentiment that “black lives matter,” which everyone except ardent racists can get behind, and the organization Black Lives Matter, which promotes Marxism while its leaders live high on the hog and waste donors’ money.

“Woke corporations in their misguided financial support for BLMGNF have failed Black America and the movement but supporting Marxism, and anarchy on the streets and in our communities,” said DaQuawn Bruce, CCA’s executive director. “Our hope is to educate them on how they might support the communities in which they operate while uplifting those who swear to serve and protect.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Folly of English Teachers Who Oppose Reading

Posted By on April 24th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/the-folly-of-english-teachers-who-oppose-reading/

The National Council of Teachers of English wants to ‘decenter’ book-reading and essay-writing as the fundamentals of English class. This is a mistake.  

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has proclaimed that it is time “to decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education.” Apparently, they don’t teach irony in English classes anymore.

The argument in the statement isn’t new. At the turn of the century, John Dewey, a central figure in progressive education, argued that the industrial revolution necessitated a “new education.” Now, the NCTE argues that “as society and technology change, so too does literacy,” and so we English teachers must focus on videos, gifs, memes, and other media.

They absolutely shouldn’t, though. Society might change, but the cognitive architecture of our brains does not. We need explicit instruction, repeated practice, phonics, a broad base of knowledge, and models to read and reason clearly. As they did centuries ago, students must grapple with rigorous, thematically rich texts to develop the capacity for critical thought, just as anyone must strain against weights to build muscle.

Similarly, technology changes, but great ideas don’t. When I was a student, blogging and Myspace were the hot new technologies. Anything I could teach my current students about the use of social media or software will be outdated by the time they mature. However, the wisdom in great literature and the warnings and exemplars found in historical texts are timeless.

Ultimately, the insular focus on present issues and contemporary media within the NCTE statement is self-defeating. If anything, to face the challenges of the future, students will need the lessons of the past. If we value self-control with social media, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the perfect warning against enslavement to passions. If we want eloquence, students need models in beautiful prose. If we want them to identify bias, they must familiarize themselves with the arguments and first principles that occur over and again throughout time.

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Panic at St. Vincent What did David Azerrad’s talk force his liberal arts audience to see? It helped pull back a veil, revealing that to be “antiracist” means, by the antiracists’ own tortured logic, to be anti-white. By Keith Whitaker

Posted By on April 24th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/22/panic-at-st-vincent/

On April 9-11, the Center for Political and Economic Thought (CPET) at St. Vincent College held a conference on “Panic, Policy, and Politics.” I was an invited speaker.

When I first read the proposed schedule, I saw that nearly half the presentations focused on the panicked response to COVID. That made sense, and was a welcome correction to the one-sided embrace of COVID policy in academia and the media. My own talk was on financial panic, of the sort that hit the United States in 2008. Other presentations addressed information manipulation, Big Tech, and education in the context of madness and hatred.

I did wonder at one title, that of David Azerrad’s talk: “Black Privilege: Racial Hysteria in Contemporary America.” Black privilege, in the form of racial preferences in education, employment, and even speech, seemed to me the product of purposeful thought, activism, and indoctrination over decades, not panic. How would this talk fit within the conference theme?

As things turned out, it fit extraordinarily well. Azerrad’s talk was the only one that generated something like panic.

St. Vincent’s administration sent an armed guard to Azerrad’s presentation, and only his. After the talk, the administration hastily forbade CPET from publishing the videos of all the presentations. They relented a few days later in the face of outcries over academic freedom. Still, the college dean was required to publish a Soviet-style “regret” that more or less labeled Prof. Azerrad a bigot. One of the college’s trustees gave an interview to the local paper calling the talk “rage-inducing.”

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Who Is Running This Show, Anyway? Things boil down to a question of “Who rules”? Is it the people or a hive of bureaucratic would-be experts? By Roger Kimball

Posted By on April 24th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/23/who-is-running-this-show-anyway/

Some people, including me, are inclined to disparage social media as an insidious and anencephalic force. Insidious it may be, but it is not entirely brainless. As proof, I offer the fact that I just learned the valuable word “quockerwodger” from a Tweet proffered by a friend. Who or what is a quockerwodger? It is, my friend observed, the perfect word to describe the current president of the United States, Joe Biden, to wit, “a puppet figure or individual whose strings are pulled entirely by someone else.”

Everyone knows this. Who or what that “someone else” is remains something of a mystery. As I have had occasion to observe in this space and elsewhere, I am wont to refer to this puppet magisterium as “The Committee.” I do not know who populates this agency or even whether it is a deliberate body or merely an anonymous aggregation of shared sentiment. 

It could certainly be more expert. If it were, Joe Biden’s verbal emissions would be less incontinent and more truthful. He would not, for example, say that he had “flown over every major wildfire” in the country. The puppeteer would have pulled up on the mouth string when Biden claimed to have traveled 17,000 miles in the “foothills of the Himalayas” with Xi Jinping. 

The puppeteer could be more adroit, but no one can doubt his presence, whoever or whatever he is. 

The late political commentator Joe Sobran called this locationless body “the Hive.” Just as in a beehive, Sobran observed, members of the coven feel they are free, yet their attitudes and behavior are utterly predictable. “Liberals laugh at conspiracy theories that assume that because there is a pattern there must be some central control; but the fact that there is no central control doesn’t mean that there is no pattern.”

Sobran is especially good on the honey that coats the Hive’s often unspoken program. “By using pragmatic language for its agenda,” he notes, “the Hive misleads the general public about its ultimate goals.”

It gains power as ordinary people adopt its language without grasping the implications. After all, who could oppose such worthy causes as ‘civil rights,’ ‘a woman’s right to choose,’ ‘protecting our children’ and ‘saving the environment’? The news media use the buzzwords of the Hive so habitually that they have become virtual organs of the Hive.

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STANDING WITH DESANTIS The Stop W.O.K.E. Act has been signed into law. Chris Rufo

Posted By on April 24th, 2022

Last December, I traveled to Florida to help introduce the Stop W.O.K.E. Act with Governor Ron DeSantis. Yesterday, I traveled back to the Sunshine State to celebrate the signing of that historic legislation, which bans schools, corporations, and government agencies from promoting race essentialism, collective guilt, and racialist abuse.

During the event in Hialeah, I delivered a speech outlining the threat of critical race theory in education and business, explaining to the predominantly Cuban audience that replacing “equality” with “equity” will lead to disaster, as many of their families had experienced in communist Latin America. Governor DeSantis praised my work, telling the audience that nobody has done more to “raise the alarm,” “educate people,” and “ make an impact” on public policy.

The Stop W.O.K.E. Act is a huge step forward in our campaign to defeat critical race theory. Governor DeSantis has proven himself to be the most effective political leader in the country and I was proud to stand beside him during yesterday’s historic events.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Critical-race-theory advocates are gaslighting Americans for power and profit By Adam Coleman

Posted By on April 24th, 2022

https://nypost.com/2022/04/20/critical-race-theory-advocates-are-gaslighting-americans-for-power-and-profit/

America’s supposed racial divide has a class element that we are all supposed to ignore. But for the past two years, I couldn’t ignore the number of media outlets and supposed intellectuals who have discarded the legitimate concerns of the middle class because they, the elite, supposedly know what’s best for us and our children.

The anti-racism movement has come to Main Street, and no one asked for its arrival.

The average American isn’t very ideological because that is a luxury most Americans can’t afford when they’re trying to make ends meet and support their families, unlike the economic and intellectual elite. Men and women who have made their entire careers hypothesizing about the makeup of America never actually listen to Americans.

We recoil listening to their conception of American life for all races. Then the ideologues gaslight us, claiming we fight it because of our hatred of the truth rather than our disgust for radical elitists who find pleasure in telling us how to behave.

Anti-racists use race as a weapon for compliance and domination over the sensibilities of good people. Their intention is to hyper-racialize Americans by having you see all aspects of life through the prism of race — including education for your children. If you are white and choose to resist, you are labeled a white supremacist, and if you are black and resist, you are labeled a sympathetic character for a white-supremacist society. The only solution in their eyes is compliance, not dialogue.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

How much has Earth Day cost us?

Posted By on April 24th, 2022

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/how-much-has-earth-day-cost-us

“The cost of housing is higher, the cost of energy is higher, and people sit longer in traffic (emitting more pollutants) because of NEPA. Former President Donald Trump instituted new rules to help streamline the NEPA process. This week, President Joe Biden undid the reforms. This is just one more reason why, if Biden wants to know why the cost of energy is going up, he needs to look in the mirror.”

Rachel Carson died before the first Earth Day in 1970, but her book Silent Spring is widely acknowledged to have inspired the modern environmental movement that pushed for its creation. Carson did not actually call for an end to all use of the pesticide DDT, but the movement she spawned definitely caused the decline of DDT use in fighting malaria — a policy that has led to the deaths of millions worldwide.

Everyone benefits when scientists like Carson do the hard work of identifying substances that cause people harm. Unfortunately, activists often take this information too far, ignoring the benefits that many chemicals provide to humanity.

The most effective environmental laws, the 1963 Clean Air Act and the 1972 Clean Water Act, try to strike a balance between the harms caused by pollution and the benefits that potentially polluting activities provide. They try to limit human exposure to pollution through permitting processes and cost-benefit analyses that can ultimately be challenged in court.

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How the boomers robbed the young of all hope Younger generations inherit a world in which the middle ranks are struggling almost everywhere Joel Kotkin

Posted By on April 24th, 2022

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/how-the-boomers-robbed-the-young-of-all-hope/

Young people do not degenerate; this occurs only after grown men have already become corrupt.” — Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, 1748.

The great test of a generation is whether it leaves better prospects for its descendants. Yet by virtually every indication, the baby boomers, and even the Gen Xers, are leaving a heritage of economic carnage — as well as a growing social and cultural dissipation that could shape our future and the fate of democratic self-rule, and not for the better. This legacy comes not from outside forces, but the investment bankers, tech oligarchs and their partners in the clerisy who have weakened their national economies and undermined the chances of upward mobility for most young people.

About 90 percent of those born in 1940 grew up to earn higher incomes than their parents, according to researchers at Harvard’s Opportunity Insights project. The same is true for only half of those born in the 1980s. In contrast to baby boomers’ massive rise into the property-owning middle class, millennials inherit a world in which the middle ranks are struggling almost everywhere, notes the OECD. According to a recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, American millennials are in danger of becoming a “lost generation” in terms of wealth accumulation.

It is no surprise that recent college graduates report the highest levels of anxiety in the country; suicides, particularly among young girls, have soared to record levels according to the Centers for Disease Control. By one measurement, one in five teenage girls suffered “a major depressive episode” in the years before the coronavirus pandemic, and two in three college students reported problems with loneliness. This pattern appears in virtually every advanced country. In 2017 the Pew Research Center found that poll respondents in France, Britain, Spain, Italy and Germany are even more pessimistic about the next generation than those in the United States. Concern for the next generation’s prospects is also widespread in such important developing countries as India, South Africa and Nigeria. The Japanese are even more discouraged: three-quarters of those polled there believe that things will be worse for the next generation.