RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/27/yes-lets-give-an-america-without-a-meaningful-government-a-try/

Quite a few in this country are madly in love with government. They cannot conceive of life in which we are free agents, liberated from the chains of reckless lawmaking, imperious regulating and stifling bureaucracy. It’s a distorted world view.

And it’s one held by a couple of university academics, who claim “the U.S. government is attempting to dismantle itself,” with the Trump administration setting out “to create an America its people have never experienced – one without a meaningful government.”

Sidney Shapiro, Wake Forest University, and Joseph P. Tomain, University of Cincinnati, who last year wrote the book “How Government Built America,” summarize their thoughts in The Conversation. They write like apologists for statism, a nasty ideology that relies on coercion and interventionism and is the factory setting for those who wish to rule rather than govern within constitutional limits. It’s founded on the belief that says “government knows better than you, in regards to important matters,” and is poisonous to civil society.

The pair complain that President Donald Trump’s “aim to eliminate government could result in” a country “in which free-market economic forces operate without any accountability to the public.” Do they have any idea how far off they are?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/mahmoud-khalil-and-the-red-green-assault-on-american-sovereignty/

The stock market of late has been on a veritable roller coaster, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency continues to ruffle feathers, Iran marches ever harrowingly closer to a nuclear weapon, and Russia and Ukraine get tantalizingly close to a ceasefire. But the national political conversation this week has curiously tended to focus not on any of that but instead on the uncertain fate of a lone noncitizen and former Columbia University graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil.

Talk about a misplacement of priorities. Most American media consumers care a great deal about their pocketbooks and retirement accounts. They likely also care about stability on the world stage — a subdued China, a relatively calm Middle East and a long-overdue peace deal to end the bloodshed in Eastern Europe.

By contrast, here is one thing media consumers probably don’t care a lot about: whether a Syrian national and Algerian citizen who was the face of last year’s violent pro-Hamas Columbia University campus riots gets deported. You would never know that, of course, from the media’s incessant focus on the Khalil saga. Is it any wonder that only 31% of Americans told Gallup last fall they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media?

In any event, Khalil is, by any metric, a wildly unsympathetic figure. The New York Times described him as the “public face of protest against Israel” at Columbia. He was the spokesman of a pro-Hamas student group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest. CUAD has referred to the Oct. 7 slaughter of Israelis as a “moral, military, and political victory” and asserted that it is fighting for nothing less than the “total eradication of Western civilization.” Khalil personally distributed propaganda pamphlets titled “Our Narrative — Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” borrowing Hamas’s code name for Oct. 7.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/25/medal-of-honor-recipients-family-ties-to-black-patriot-of-the-american-revolution/

In a White House ceremony on January 3rd, the daughter of Corporal Fred B. McGee received his posthumously awarded Medal of Honor for his heroic actions in the Korean War. His was one of several from the Korean and Vietnam Wars during the ceremony. While McGee survived the war, he died in 2020 while his family continued to campaign for his award to be upgraded to the Medal of Honor.

His actions on Hill 528 near Tang-Wan-Ni, Korea, on June 16, 1952, occurred while serving with the 17th Infantry Regiment, one of the few American military units that had been racially integrated at that time. According to his Medal of Honor citation, McGee was a light machine gunner when his platoon assaulted a fortified enemy position. Braving machine gun and mortar fire, he laid down covering fire for the assaulting troops. When his squad leader was wounded, McGee took command and exposed himself in order to lead the squad forward to a position to neutralize an enemy machine gun.

When the machine gunner was mortally wounded, he ordered his squad to withdraw and volunteered to cover their retreat and to help recover the dead and wounded. He aided a wounded man to safety despite being subjected to considerable mortar and artillery fire. He was initially awarded the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts for his action on Hill 528.

https://www.thefp.com/p/mia-love-last-wish-for-america-utah
Mia Love never had it easy. Yet in an age where cynicism about the United States and its founding had become the norm, she never lost sight of the great opportunities America had given her.

In 2022, Love was diagnosed with brain cancer. Two weeks ago, she announced in a moving Deseret News essay that she would soon die, and used this final opportunity to write a love letter to America. We wanted to have her on “Honestly,” but this past weekend, her family announced that she had passed away at age 49.

You can read all about her life in this beautiful obituary published by Deseret News, a Utah publication we admire. We are grateful to them for allowing us to reprint this lightly edited piece and help it find the widest possible audience. — BW

My dear friends, fellow Americans, and Utahns, I am taking up my pen, not to say goodbye but to say thank you and express my living wish for you and the America I know.

My battle with brain cancer is coming to an end. The disease is no longer responding to treatment, and my family and I have shifted our focus from treatments to enjoying every moment and making memories with the time we have.

My life has been extended by exceptional medical care, science, and extraordinary professionals who have become dear friends. My extra season of life has also been the result of the faith and prayers of countless friends, known and unknown. The result of such humble faith and pleading prayers have been felt by me and my family in ways too numerous to count. I have always believed that faith and science are inextricably interconnected.

As a mayor, member of congress, and media commentator, I have seen the worst of petty politics, divisive rhetoric, and disappointing lapses of moral character by some. These same roles also provided me a front-row seat and backstage pass to be blessed and inspired by the courage, vision, and hope of America’s finest daughters, sons, and citizens.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-3-23-the-kennedy-assassination-and-the-persistence-of-conspiracy-theories-part-ii

“Conspiracy theory” — the label evokes connotations of something so preposterous that it couldn’t possibly be true. With an obvious simple explanation for some incident easily at hand, generally involving a single perpetrator or a natural cause, the alternative “conspiracy theory” posits that a large group of people plotted to bring the incident about. The very size of the posited group alone makes the conspiracy theory seem unlikely, because such a large group could never hope to keep the secret. And then, in the classic conspiracy theory, the large group of conspirators consists mostly or entirely of agents of the government, who have allegedly acted in nefarious and illegal ways against the interests of the people they are sworn to serve, and have then also covered up their illegal conduct. Our government employees and officials may not be perfect, but surely they would not carry out, and then cover up, massive illegal conspiracies against the interests of the people.

Put these factors together, and you can see why sticking the label “conspiracy theory” on a hypothesis has long been an effective way to dismiss that hypothesis out of hand. It’s a “conspiracy theory” — and therefore it is so preposterous that there is no need to deal with its specifics. And, generally speaking, far more often than not, the obvious simple explanation of the incident is likely to be correct.

But not always. And indeed over the last several years we have seen one after another hypothesis initially branded as a “conspiracy theory” later established to be true, at least within the limits that truth can be known in our imperfect world. In multiple cases the conspiracy theories have been vindicated after years of having been vociferously denounced and belittled and censored by the media. To list just a few of the most notorious:

The theory that members of the FBI conspired to obtain illegal warrants and then to spy on the 2016 Trump campaign for President.

The theory that members of the Hillary Clinton campaign, together with friendly law firms and campaign consultants and researchers, conspired to produce and pay for and spread to the media fake opposition research painting Donald Trump as having “colluded” with Russia during the 2016 campaign.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/25/shed-no-tears-for-fired-federal-workers/

When the Trump administration announces the next round of government layoffs, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, the sob stories will be deafening. For what? A bunch of overpaid, underworked bureaucrats?

Estimates about how many jobs have been cut so far differ. The press claims DOGE has eliminated around 100,000 federal jobs. Challenger, Gray & Christmas says 62,530 were let go in January and February. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded a net loss of only 6,700 federal jobs in February.

Whatever the case, Donald Trump wants big numbers. The Department of Education already said it will chop its workforce in half. Veterans Affairs says it is targeting 80,000 workers.

The White House is currently reviewing plans for a second wave of layoffs after getting recommendations from Cabinet officials.

Terrible, right?

Wrong. Consider the context missing from every one of these sky-is-falling stories:

This is just a haircut.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/03/24/big_law_gets_back_to_business_152545.html
Frankly this sounds mean and vindictive to me….rsk

The top law firms in New York City gave Donald Trump the high hat for years, despite his wealth, fame, and standing. But Big Law is finally putting politics aside and getting back to business.

Last month, Sullivan & Cromwell agreed to handle President Trump’s appeal in the egregious criminal case brought by posing partisan prosecutor Alvin Bragg. Last week, Paul Weiss agreed to provide $40 million of legal work on “mutually agreeable matters” in support of the Trump administration’s policy initiatives, and agreed to boot DEI too, in exchange for Trump’s agreement to terminate his Executive Order “Addressing Risks from Paul Weiss.”

Some decry Paul Weiss’ agreement as craven – and one young associate at another firm threatened to quit unless her law firm fights with Trump to her satisfaction. She’s missing the point, as have most of Trump’s other critics in the legal profession.

Until relatively recently, Big Law is all about business – and avoiding political risks. Leading partners at the mega-firms are practical people who behave rationally, not ideologically. And that’s how it’s supposed to work.

So, when Democratic Party lawyers tried to overwhelm Trump with egregious and extra-legal lawfare, Americans rallied around him and helped him retake the presidency. Even then, Big Law refused to represent him because the risk-adjusted return of helping Donald Trump was less than shunning him. Nothing personal, just business – or so they thought.

It’s true that most lawyers, including those who pursue careers in the elite law firms, are Democrats. Two of the three law firms singled out by President Trump are among the most unbalanced of the largest 100 firms. And while Paul Weiss was closer to average, its partners donated more money to Democratic Party campaign committees in a recent cycle than any other large law firm – and one of its partners prepped Kamala Harris for her debate with Trump.

It’s also true that big law firms perceive left-wing activist groups as an outsize risk to their ability to recruit top talent, mostly from elite institutions that are also left. To mitigate that risk, firms have for many years catered to the groups’ requests for financial, policy, and legal support.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/24/california-and-its-collapsing-blue-state-democrat-model/

While the media and the new Democrat Party grow hysterical over the Trump counter-revolution, they are missing some of the most revolutionary and insidious changes in American society of the last century.

Much has been written about the collapse of the old orthodox Democratic Party, along with the growing irrelevance and dysfunction of the legacy media, elite universities, and state and federal agencies. But their growing unattractiveness is all related and was not just the result of top-down development.

Rather, current Democrat Party radicalism, street theater, and violence were merely reflections of its own preexisting cultural antipathy toward the middle class. The party is now a pyramidal coalition of the very wealthy and professional classes comprising the capstone, resting atop a vast, expanding bottom of the subsidized and working poor, strapped pensioners and retirees, angry indebted students, 30s-something urban wannabees, impoverished immigrants—including perhaps 30 million here illegally—and, increasingly, trapped residents of a dystopian big-city America.

The collapse of the blue-state/blue-city model and those who work within and promote it reflects the radical environmentalism of the college-educated, as well as an array of high taxes, high crime, endless government regulations, housing shortages, massive homelessness, illegal immigration, critical-legal-theory prosecutors, ethnic and racial chauvinism, defund-the-police city councils, and, most importantly, chronic budget deficits and vast, unfunded pension liabilities and obligations.

In response to this progressive implosion that accounts for Democrat Party unpopularity, under the radar are historic demographic shifts. They reflect two insidious phenomena.

One, the blue-state, urban/professional/college-educated profile has become antithetical to fertility.

No one knows exactly the contributory relative roles to childlessness played by the progressive embrace of abortion on demand or secularism and atheism. Certainly, the fixations on higher education certification, massive student loan debt, years of student limbo, prohibitive housing prices, and a cultural value system that places status, titles, careers, and degrees over children all further promote a declining birthrate.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/24/trump-chaos-or-the-gales-of-creative-destruction/

During President Donald Trump’s first term and again in his second, we have heard his critics indict him for the “chaos” he’s stirred up in Washington. They see disorder and confusion. But those not suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome recognize this as the needed shake-up of a government that had grown out of control and become a threat to those it was intended to protect and serve.

The “chaos” label has not been used as often as “Nazi,” “fascist,” “dictator,” “tyrant” and “authoritarian” to try to vilify Trump. But it’s been part of the campaign to – let’s be frank – dehumanize the man in an effort to cripple his administration, chase him from the public square and rile the unbalanced who would do him harm.

A week into his second term, Senate Democrats wanted the country to know about the “lawlessness and chaos in America” brought by Trump. A day later, an overwrought Charles Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, said Trump “plunged the country into chaos” when he “announced a halt to virtually all federal funds across the country.”

On the same day, San Francisco Democrat and former House speaker – may she never hold that post again – made a similar accusation, wildly claiming that the “administration’s cruel decision to freeze federal funding for critical services across the country has unleashed chaos, confusion and fear for hardworking Americans.”

Sounds as if the pair and their staffs coordinated the attack. But give the Democrats credit. They know how to move in lockstep, even to the point of producing a political puppet show in which they posted “identical talking points to social media” that was widely ridiculed for its asininity. 

Even the Manchester Guardian, which daily cranks out copy scrawled by an assortment of cranks, has added its opinion, with its foreign affairs commentator whining about an “ensuing chaos” that “characterizes what may become the briefest honeymoon in White House history.” Le Monde, which bills itself as France’s “leading” newspaper, is also in the game, insisting that “Trump’s chaos” is the key to “revival” for the “unpopular and lost” Democrats.