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January 2021

Lessons From the Least of These The keys to transforming lives in the most desperate communities. Jason D. Hill

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/lessons-least-these-jason-d-hill/

At the heart of charity lies a great deal of moral sadism. For many left-liberals who stake the moral meaning and purpose of their lives on relieving black suffering in order for their own lives to have continued meaning and purpose, they not only must see black people suffer, but they must also create policies that perpetuate black poverty and block the initiatives of blacks in their efforts towards self-reliance.

If black individuals dare to reject the victim-narrative on which charity and welfare are dependent in order to gain the Left’s philosophical legitimacy, it means they have not allowed their agency to be expropriated, and instead will rely on the virtues of their own character and their own capabilities for their uplift. Blacks who have the temerity to effect this effrontery against the managerial liberal welfare class have identified the moral hypocrisy of people who pretend they want to help, but whose real purpose is racial exploitation and power lust. These left-liberals need blacks to suffer so they can gain moral atonement and redemption in the amelioration of that suffering. But what if blacks never had to suffer — and don’t need to?

What if poor blacks, former gang members and drug addicts, welfare recipients and prostitutes had a credo and philosophy—superlative guiding principles by which to live such that they would be weaned from the dependency on welfare and from the elitist experts and managerial classes who claim to know how best to solve their problems? What if the engines of change came from blacks themselves, and any helping hand extended to them was not based on charity but, rather, one based on the trader principle? That is, help based on principles of reciprocity that guide the philanthropic exchange just as it guides exchanges in the market. In other words, anyone helping others regardless of background should be told: never do more for them than they are willing to do for themselves.

Xi Jinping Wows Them at Davos China’s President sweet-talks liberal leaders as he threatens Taiwan.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinping-wows-them-at-davos-11611617879?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Chinese President Xi Jinping knows his audience. In his Monday address to the World Economic Forum, the annual meeting of global luminaries in Davos, Mr. Xi sounded like a liberal internationalist in good standing. He pulled out all the buzzwords that make Davosians swoon: “inclusive growth,” “green development,” “global governance” and “consensus building.”

The Davos website effused that this was a “historic opportunity for collaboration.” But Mr. Xi’s People’s Liberation Army told a different story over the weekend, menacing Taiwan with back-to-back military flyovers of more than a dozen planes. The provocation is a reminder that while the government has changed hands in Washington, it hasn’t in Beijing, which still sees extending sovereignty over Taiwan—possibly by force—as a priority.

Mr. Xi said in his speech that “the strong should not bully the weak,” but that admonition doesn’t seem to apply to his own government. “We should stay committed to international law and international rules, instead of seeking one’s own supremacy,” he added. Tell that to the people of Hong Kong who were promised autonomy through 2047 in a treaty Beijing signed with Britain but are now being arrested for even mild political dissent.

Judging from comments by Secretary of State nominee Tony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in their Senate hearings, the new Administration seems to recognize the importance of Taiwan’s independence and U.S. predominance in the Western Pacific.

Joe Biden’s COVID Deceptions By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/joe-bidens-covid-deceptions/

He has gone back on a campaign promise to change the virus’s trajectory and set as a goal a rate of vaccination that the U.S. had already met or exceeded.

P resident Joe Biden contends there is “nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months,” which is the exact opposite of what presidential candidate Joe Biden promised voters during the 2020 campaign. And by “exact opposite,” I mean the president’s alleged plan to beat coronavirus literally said that “the trajectory of COVID-19 in America is headed in the wrong direction” and only he could fix it.

The Biden “plan” amounted to a slew of nebulous promises that would be implemented to correct the “Trump fiasco,” such as accelerating the development of a vaccine, producing more masks, and pressuring governors to sign mask mandates. Biden repeatedly promised to alter the trajectory of COVID. In a platitudinous October 23 speech, Biden pledged to “immediately put in place a national strategy that will position our country to finally get ahead of this virus and get back our lives.”

“Immediately” is an adverb meaning at once, instantly, without any intervening time. It does not mean waiting around to take credit for when the Trump-era vaccines kick in.

One of the silliest talking points pushed by left-wing pundits during the election was to say that Biden had warned us about the pandemic. Evidence of this contention revolves around a single USA Today column in which the then–presidential candidate noted that there were at “least five cases” of COVID in the United States, and there “will likely be more.” Hardly Nostradamus.

Gregg Jarrett: Pelosi seeks retaliation in Trump impeachment trial — get ready for ‘the sequel’ It is time to end the politics of revenge

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/pelosi-trump-impeachment-trial-gregg-jarrett

Here we go again. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slowly and somberly walking an article of impeachment through the Capitol flanked by House managers giving their best impression of a funeral procession. Except this time, they’re wearing Covid masks.  

Let’s call it “Impeachment: The Sequel.” It is destined to be as pitiable as the original. Like a cheap movie franchise that Hollywood keeps exploiting, this sham version will be the equivalent of a box office dud. 

Mugging for the cameras, Pelosi will probably mutter something about “making history,” as she did before.  Maybe she’ll again pass out souvenir signing pens like lollipops at a town carnival.  It’s an insult to charades.  Pelosi seeks retaliation masquerading as impeachment.  

The first impeachment trial in the Senate a year ago was a baseless fiasco that ended in the easy acquittal of President Trump. Democrats did not come close to mustering the two-thirds majority votes required for conviction and removal from office.  That predictable outcome rendered the entire exercise a colossal waste of time. 

It is almost certain that the sequel will mimic the same bad ending.  Democrats in the House rushed through an ineptly crafted article of impeachment accusing Trump of “inciting an insurrection” when he delivered a speech on the nation’s mall on January 6, 2021, and criminals chose to riot inside the Capitol building. 

Making America California The Biden administration seems determined to run the country on the ruinous model of the Golden State. Joel Kotkin

https://www.city-journal.org/biden-touts-california-as-model-for-america

As the Biden administration settles in and begins to formulate its agenda, progressive pundits, politicians, and activists point to California as a role model for national policy. If the administration listens to them, it would prove a disaster for America’s already-beleaguered middle and working classes.

Biden, suggests an ecstatic account in the Los Angeles Times, seeks to “make America California again,” and he will have plenty of help. Californians will run Health and Human Services, the Treasury, Homeland Security, and Energy. Former California senator Kamala Harris is vice president, and San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi rules the House of Representatives. Progressives like Laura Tyson and Lenny Mendonca see the shift as embracing “California’s distinctive approach to market capitalism.” The Golden State, they insist, can “show the way forward” toward a more socially just future.

As a California resident for nearly half a century, I wonder if these worthies see the same state I do. California has its wonderful spots, great neighborhoods, beautiful vistas, amazing entrepreneurs, and great amenities, but it makes a poor advertisement for social democracy. It suffers the nation’s highest poverty rate and presents the widest gap between middle- and upper-middle income earners of any state. Minorities—notably African-Americans and Latinos—do worse in California’s metros than elsewhere in the country, according to a recent study that we conducted at the Urban Reform Institute. In Atlanta, African-American median incomes, adjusted for costs, are almost double those in San Francisco and Los Angeles; Latinos earn $20,000 more in midwestern and southern cities than in the enlightened metros along the California coast.

Indonesia Set to Take on China and Claim Leadership of “Moderate” Islam By Dr. James M. Dorsey

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/indonesia-moderate-islam/

Indonesian president Joko Widodo’s recent cabinet reshuffle suggests that Indonesia may adopt a more critical attitude toward China and reinforce government support for efforts by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the world’s largest Muslim movement, to reform Islam and position the Southeast Asian state as a key player in a battle with Middle Eastern rivals for the soul of Islam.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo signaled some potential policy moves with the recent appointment of ambassador to the US Muhammad Lutfi as trade minister and prominent Nahdlatul Ulama official Yaqut Cholil Qoumas as minister of religious affairs.

Lutfi’s appointment came two months after a visit by Mike Pompeo to Jakarta in October at the invitation of Nahdlatul Ulama during which the Secretary of State extended Indonesia’s access to a preferential tariff arrangement and opened the door to a free trade agreement with the US.

Pompeo emphasized in talks with Widodo and in an address to a Nahdlatul Ulama conference the need to challenge China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea as well as its brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims in the People’s Republic’s northwestern province of Xinjiang.

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy, extradited to China three Uighurs, the dominant Turkic ethnic group in Xinjiang, just days before Pompeo’s arrival.

Qoumas’s appointment is significant not only because of his prominent Nahdlatul Ulama background but also because he is one of the leaders of the movement’s most influential wing, which has adopted a tough position on China’s repression of the Uighurs.