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July 2019

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Wokeness at Warp Speed by Mark Steyn

By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.steynonline.com/9552/wokeness-at-warp-speed

A few months ago I observed to Tucker Carlson that the difference between “Bush Derangement Syndrome” and “Trump Derangement Syndrome” was that the former was largely contained to a visceral loathing for the President himself, whereas the latter has been extended to anyone who voted for him – ie, the half of the electorate comprised of “racists”, “fascists” and “white supremacists”. Now TDS rampages on, to consume half the Democrats, too.

Say what you like about Nancy Pelosi, but she took back the House by running the Dems as a “moderate” party that talked about things like voter concern over health care. A year on, and most of what the party’s presidential candidates are yakking about – busing, the needs of trans-African-Americans, open borders to all six-and-a-half billion Undocumented-Americans around the world – is bonkers. The Democrat platform is a twitchy reflex that, whatever Trump is for, they’re against. So he wakes up every morning, tweets his rubber hammer at their kneecaps, and they respond accordingly. He doesn’t even have to hold any particular position: The actual Trump is utterly indifferent on the matter of “gender fluidity” and, from his experience as a businessman in Canada and Scotland, is not ill-disposed toward socialized health care. But the Trump of their fevers is a transphobe who wants to shove granny off a cliff, and that’s who they’re running against.

So the party of Big Government will no longer cooperate with the biggest government of all. Behold Eric Garcetti, mayor of a city the middle class is fleeing, where less and less works, where traffic is at a standstill, and you can’t get out and walk because the sidewalks are full of tent cities, human feces and flesh-eating viruses. And his priority is non-cooperation with ICE. And notice his artful pitch: Democrats have long abolished the distinction between “immigrants” and the millions who just walked into the country, which is why the Mayor sells his position to “Angelenos” as simply that of being a “good neighbor”. Are Mexico and Guatemala “good neighbors” to the United States? Does a “good neighbor” just move into the house next door and then demand you support him in his lawlessness?

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EDUCATION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Age of Amnesia by Joel Kotkin

By on July 16th, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/07/15/age-of-amnesia/

We live, as the Indian essayist Saeed Akhter Mirza has put it, in “an age of amnesia.” Across the world, most notably in the West, we are discarding the knowledge and insights passed down over millennia and replacing it with politically correct bromides cooked up in the media and the academy. In some ways, this process recalls, albeit in digital form, the Middle Ages. Conscious shaping of thought—and the manipulation of the past to serve political purposes—is becoming commonplace and pervasive.

Google’s manipulation of algorithms, recently discussed in American Affairs, favors both their commercial interests and also their ideological predilections. Similarly, we see the systematic “de-platforming” of conservative and other groups who offend the mores of tech oligarchs and their media fellow travellers. Major companies are now distancing themselves from “offensive” reminders of American history, such as the Nike’s recent decision to withdraw a sneaker line featuring the Betsy Ross flag. In authoritarian societies, the situation is already far worse. State efforts to control the past in China are enhanced by America’s tech firms, who are helping to erase from history events like the Tiananmen massacre or the mass starvations produced by Maoist policies. Technology has provided those who wish to shape the past, and the future, tools of which the despots of yesterday could only dream.

Factories of  “Mass Amnesia”

Sadly, many of  the very institutions charged with understanding the past are now slipping back to Medieval antecedents. Writing in 1913, the historian J. B. Bury compared the Middle Ages to “a large field … covered by beliefs which authority claimed to impose as true, and [where] reason was warned off the ground.” Scholars at the University of Paris, described as the “theological arbiter of Europe,” were “licensed” by the bishop to, among other things, defend church dogma. In the late 1300s, the University held a conclave to reassert the reality of demons that were supposedly infecting society. 1   

Over the ensuing centuries, as capitalism and liberal thought arose, the university gradually  emerged as a beacon of liberal education, open inquiry, and tolerance. But this period of liberalization seems to be coming to an end. Like the Medieval scholars, today’s intellectuals are narrowing the field of inquiry. The “frantic energy to know more and more about less and less,” identified by Russian sociologist Pitirim Sorokin a half century ago, has made academic life increasingly irrelevant to most people.

A healthy appreciation for the past is being lost. Today, historical analysis is increasingly shaped by concerns over race, gender, and class. There are repeated campaigns, particularly in and around schools, to pull down offensive statues and murals—including of George Washington—and to rename landmarks to cleanse Western history of its historical blights.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Rep. Ilhan Omar Refuses To Denounce Al-Qaeda, Islamic Terrorism By Madeline Osburn

By on July 16th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/16/rep-ilhan-omar-refuses-denounce-al-qaeda-islamic-terrorism/

Rep. Ilhan Omar refused to answer whether she supports the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda, at a press conference Monday.

“I will not dignify it with an answer because I know that every single Islamophobe, every single person who is hateful, who is driven by an ideology of ‘othering’ as this president is, rejoices in us responding to that and us defending ourselves,” Omar said.

“I do not expect every time there is a white supremacist who attacks or there is a white man who kills in a school or in a movie theater, or in a mosque, or in a synagogue, I don’t expect my white community members to respond on whether they love that person or not. And so I think it is beyond time, it is beyond time to ask Muslims to condemn terrorists. We are no longer going to allow the dignification of such ridiculous — ridiculous statement,” she said.

Earlier on Monday, President Trump recalled Omar’s previous comments about the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Omar still refuses to answer the question of who she believes was responsible for the attacks. Multiple requests from The Federalist for a comment from Omar have gone unanswered.

“I mean, I look at the one, I look at Omar, I don’t know her, I never met her. I hear the way she talks about al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda has killed many Americans,” Trump said. “When she talked about the World Trade Center being knocked down, some people, you remember the famous ‘some people.’ These are people that, in my opinion, hate our country.”

Trump also tweeted out similar comments on Monday afternoon.

In a 2013 interview, Omar complained about people who think there are differences between America and al-Qaeda.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

What The GOP Would Look Like If Peter Thiel Were In Charge Thiel is not only advancing traditional conservative values, but he’s also asking for the overthrow of the prestigious institutions of post-war America.By Titus Techera

By on July 16th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/16/gop-look-like-peter-thiel-charge/

On July 14, the National Conservatism Conference started in Washington DC as the first public attempt to say what conservatism is after the Donald Trump election. It’s fitting that it’s organized by a new outfit, the Edmund Burke Foundation, created in January 2019 and chaired by Yoram Hazony, the scholar who became famous in 2018 for his book “The Virtue Of Nationalism,” and advised by Rusty Reno, editor of First Things and Chris DeMuth, the prominent conservative scholar of public policy (all three of whom are speakers at the conference).

A large number of other journalists, intellectuals, and scholars will give speeches—some famous, some not (here’s the list). The first striking thing is the absence of politicians speaking about the future of conservatism. Apparently, we are looking for ideas elsewhere, despite the GOP’s historic electoral victories in 2016. The exceptions are Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), recently famous for proposing a bill to use the federal government to enforce free speech requirements on social media corporations, and National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Redefining and Popularizing Conservatism

The conference is nevertheless emphatically political, aimed not merely at redefining conservatism, but at making the case that it is a preferable alternative to the liberalism prevailing in elite institutions in America. The speakers are aiming to popularize new ideas to inspire politicians and political organizations.

In short, they want a new GOP fit for the political world shaking up after the 2016 election. There is something admirable and even noble about this attempt, but we should also see what the new ideas are and where they tend.

To start with, let us talk about Peter Thiel’s keynote address, which circulated widely. Thiel rarely makes political statements, but he shocked everyone by supporting Trump in 2016 and giving a passionate speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC). Now, he’s doubling down on some of his most surprising, unconventional ideas, which finally have their chance to become part of a party platform.

Thiel took aim at the most prestigious liberal institutions in our times: Silicon Valley and academia. He claimed they are only good for elite liberals and have become bad for America as a whole and directly inimical to the conservative half of America.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Selfish Actors of Illegal Immigration By Victor Davis Hanson

By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/illegal-immigration-many-selfish-actors-benefit/

Many people benefit from the lawbreaking: The Mexican and Central American governments, the Democratic party, employers, ethnic activists, rich progressives, and the illegal border crossers themselves.

Almost every party invested in open borders proves utterly selfish, without regard for the legitimate interests of others or of the law itself.

The Illegal Immigrant
The immigrant is the pawn of Latin American governments who view him as inanimate capital, someone who represents thousands of dollars in future foreign-exchange remittances, as well as one less mouth to feed at home — if he crosses the border, legality be damned. If that sounds a cruel or cynical appraisal, then why would the Mexican government in 2005 print a comic booklet (“Guide for the Mexican Migrant”) with instructions to its citizens on how best to cross into the United States — urging them to break American law and assuming that they could not read?

Yet for all the savagery dealt out to the immigrant — the callousness of his government, the shakedowns of the coyotes and cartels, the exploitation of his labor by new American employers — the immigrant himself is not entirely innocent. He knows — or does not care to know — that by entering the U.S., he has taken a slot from a would-be legal immigrant, one, unlike himself, who played by the rules and waited years in line for his chance to become an American.

He knowingly violates U.S. immigration law. And when the first act of an immigrant is to enter the U.S. illegally, the second to reside there unlawfully, and the third so often to adopt false identities, he undermines American law on the expectation that he will receive exemptions not accorded to U.S. citizens, much less to other legal immigrants. In terms of violations of federal law, and crimes such as hit-and-run accidents and identity theft, the illegal immigrant is overrepresented in the criminal-justice system, and indeed in federal penitentiaries.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Josh Hawley Takes Aim at Higher Ed By Robert VerBruggen

By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/josh-hawley-takes-aim-at-higher-ed/

Over on the home page I have some thoughts about the true nature of the student-debt “crisis” and some ideas for how to deal with it. Coincidentally, today Josh Hawley announced some very relevant reforms.

Per his press release:

SEN. HAWLEY: BREAK UP HIGHER EDUCATION MONOPOLY, PROVIDE MORE OPTIONS FOR CAREER TRAINING

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is introducing two pieces of legislation this week that will expand federal aid for people pursuing vocational education and will put higher education institutions on the hook for students unable to repay student loans.

It’s an odd definition of “monopoly” that encompasses a sector with thousands of competing options, but okay: Higher ed is pretty dysfunctional and these reforms target two big problems with it.

Hawley’s first bill will “make more job-training and certification programs, like employer-based apprenticeships and digital boot camps, eligible to receive Pell Grants through an alternative accreditation process.” This is a good idea. There’s no reason we should be subsidizing college to the exclusion of other ways to learn important skills.

His second bill requires “colleges and universities to pay off 50 percent of the balance of student loans accrued while attending their institution for students who default, and forbids them from increasing the cost of attendance to offset their liability.”

The idea of a “money-back guarantee” for college isn’t crazy; it forces schools to take responsibility for their students’ outcomes, rather than accepting students who don’t have the skills to graduate, collecting tuition for a few years, and then sending the kids along poorer, indebted, and lacking a credential.

But I’m not sold on the idea of forbidding colleges “from increasing the cost of attendance to offset their liability.” I’m not sure it’s possible to enforce such a rule — and while higher ed in general is inefficient, I’m not sure it’s possible for every college to shoulder a new liability without raising its prices at all. Further, if tuition hikes resulted from this legislation, they would basically “price in” half the school’s default risk, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Trump and the ‘Racist Tweets’ By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/donald-trump-and-the-racist-tweets/

There’s a difference between racist and just stupid.

What does “racist” even mean anymore?

Racism is the headline on President Trump’s Sunday tweets — the media-Democrat complex assiduously describes them as “racist tweets” as if that were a fact rather than a trope. I don’t think they were racist; I think they were abjectly stupid.

Like many Americans, I am tired of being lectured about racism by racists and racialists, individuals whose full-field explanation for all life’s issues is this matter of genetic happenstance that should be increasingly irrelevant in a pluralistic society.

Is it “racist” to tell people who have contempt for the country — who abhor the common culture that makes us American — that they ought to go back to where they came from? It has nativist and reactionary overtones, but I don’t think it is racist. I’ll grant this much, though: It is closer to actual racism than the Left’s usual demagogic claim: I am a racist if I extend to a non-white nincompoop like Ilhan Omar the courtesy of taking her seriously as an individual and a public official, as if it were her race rather than the idiocy of what she says that moves me to dissent.

It would be racist to tell the progressive “Squad” that they don’t belong in our country because of their race or ethnic roots. I don’t understand Trump to have done that. He is attacking their radicalism, which they wear like a badge of honor.

I don’t believe Trump is a master strategist who did this to force Speaker Pelosi and other mainstream Democrats, at their electoral peril, to embrace the radicals. That’s just the lemonade that Trump supporters are trying to make of the president’s never-ending supply of lemons. In any event, while it is beneath a president to carp in Trump’s juvenile way, I have less heartburn in principle with a president’s attacking radicalism than I do with a congresswoman’s claim that any criticism of her is an implicit criticism of immigrants, women, black people, etc.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Universities In Race To The Bottom As Grade Inflation Runs Rampant Nick Morrison Nick Morrison

By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2019/07/12/universities-in-race-to-the-bottom-as-grade-inflation-runs-rampant/#fbfe4ba67ed3

Universities appear locked in a race to the bottom as soaring numbers of students get top grades in their degree courses.

More than a quarter of students now get the highest classification, almost doubling in under a decade, according to new figures.

And an education watchdog has warned that much of the increase is unjustified, leading to fears that universities are lowering standards in an attempt to attract more students.

The proportion of students awarded first class honours – the highest possible – at English universities has risen from 16% in 2010/11 to 29% in 2017/18, according to new analysis by the independent Office for Students (OfS).

Much of the increase is unexplained by factors such as entrance qualifications or student characteristics, the OfS found, with 13.9% of the rise unaccounted for.

The pattern was also widespread across universities, with 94% of 148 higher education providers having a statistically significant unexplained increase in the proportion of students awarded first class degrees.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Labyrinthine Ways and Wages of Stefan Halper By Eric Felten

By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/07/15/stefan_halpers_wages_of_spying.html

Stefan Halper, the shadowy Cambridge academic who may have helped the FBI spy on the Trump campaign, was paid more than $1 million by a U.S. agency for research papers of dubious value, according to a new government report. But even as it shed new light on Halper’s work, the report left unanswered central questions about his Trump-Russia role and raised new ones about the circuitous winds on which Washington dollars manage to fly out the window.

In the months leading up to the 2016 election, Halper famously approached and questioned – sometimes amiably, sometimes aggressively — two men who became linchpins of the now-debunked Trump-Russia conspiracy theories: George Papadopoulos, whose supposed knowledge of Russian “dirt” on Hillary Clinton allegedly sparked the FBI’s official probe of the Trump campaign, and Carter Page, whose Russian connections led the Department of Justice to wiretap him.

The report, completed by the Department of Defense inspector general, does not address Halper’s interaction with Papadopoulos and Page, nor does it question or answer whether Halper was a spy, a confidential human source, or just a curious professor. But it makes clear that Halper signed his richest contract award with the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment — $411,575 for two studies on China’s economy — on Sept. 26, 2016, around the time Halper was meeting with Page and Papadopoulos.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum: Evan Cohen: Netanyahu’s perfect pick for foreign press adviser Even the prime minister’s enemies at home are fully aware that it takes weeks of bureaucracy to fill public-servant posts, so they had to limit their baseless accusations to the “suspicious timing” of the announcement.

By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/evan-cohen-netanyahus-perfect-pick-for-foreign-press-adviser/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday that he had appointed Dr. Evan Cohen—founding chairman of Likud Pride, the party’s LGBTQ caucus—as his foreign press adviser.

Cohen was a wise choice for the role of explaining Netanyahu’s policies to the international media. The 51-year-old tenured teacher of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, who immigrated to Israel from South Africa at the age of 9, has been a vocal and articulate bilingual Likud activist for many years, writing op-eds in Hebrew and English, and participating in radio and television debates in both languages. It was a one-on-one TV interview with i24News on June 6, in fact, which reportedly gave Netanyahu the idea to hire him in the first place. And it’s no wonder, given Cohen’s ability to present the Likud’s worldview with clarity.

This has not prevented detractors from engaging in a campaign to cast aspersions on Netanyahu’s motives and Cohen’s credentials, however, particularly with the Sept. 17 Knesset elections looming so large.

The faulty ammunition being used in the “two-fer” attack is a scandal surrounding statements made by Israeli Education Minister Rafi Peretz on Saturday evening. During an interview with Channel 12’s Dana Weiss, Peretz—an Orthodox rabbi and a member of the Union of Right-Wing Parties—said that it is “possible” for homosexuals to be converted through therapy.

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