RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/celebrating-with-lee-edwards-as-communism-is-put-on-trial/?utm_source=

Last week’s opening of the Victims of Communism Museum resulted from a 35-year effort spearheaded by NR’s old and dear friend, Lee Edwards (fun fact: His first piece for this magazine, “The Way of All France,” was published in the February 1, 1958, issue). Yours Truly corresponded with Lee prior to the ribbon-cutting, asking a few questions, getting a few answers in return. It would be a shame to not share them, and so we do:

Jack Fowler: Why will the world be a better place for there being this museum?

Lee Edwards: Because the museum will serve as the cornerstone of our global educational campaign about the manifold victims and crimes of communism.

Fowler: The Nazis have been rightly denigrated, their leaders executed for crimes against humanity, the name made synonymous with evil — but there was no such justice for East Europe’s and Asia’s communist henchmen. They are not the stuff of vilification by Western media, by Western culture, at least in no way comparable to the Nazis. Is this a driving force in part behind the creation of the Victims of Communism Memorial and the museum, this sense of a lack of justice or righteous admission of just how dastardly communism is?

Edwards: Nazism was exposed and convicted at the Nuremburg trials. VOC intends to put communism on trial in Washington, D.C. We will feature witnesses from the nearly 40 nations that suffered under communism — some 1.5 billion still do so in China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos.

Fowler: On the memorial, 100 million are recognized — are they the murdered? What is the greater number of true victims of communism?

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/poll-young-democrats-are-souring-on-femini

Michelle Goldberg’s latest New York Times column notes a very interesting new poll regarding public opinion on feminism:

Recently the Southern Poverty Law Center and Tulchin Research commissioned a poll of 1,500 Americans to measure belief in various reactionary sentiments, including the “great replacement” conspiracy theory and the idea that trans people are a threat to children. Because misogyny is so ubiquitous in far-right spaces, Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the S.P.L.C., decided to add a question about feminism.

Predictably, most young Republicans agree with the statement, “Feminism has done more harm than good.” What was astonishing was how many young Democrats agreed as well. While only 4 percent of Democratic men over 50 thought feminism was harmful, 46 percent of Democratic men under 50 did. Nearly a quarter of Democratic women under 50 agreed, compared with only 10 percent of those 50 and older.

Goldberg, a progressive and a feminist herself, concludes that this shift is due to the fact “that feminism has been sapped of cultural vitality”: “After four years of Donald Trump, more than two years of a pandemic, and an unending right-wing onslaught, a lot of people with feminist sympathies are numb and exhausted.” I have a slightly different explanation. Feminism today is distinct from the feminism of past generations — far more radical and less tolerant, more concerned with quashing dissent than securing rights. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/sotomayor-on-thomas-the-one-justice-in-the-building-that-literally-knows-every-employees-name/?utm

For all of the acrimony around the Supreme Court these days, it is nice to hear this public tribute by Justice Sonia Sotomayor to being friends with her colleague Clarence Thomas, before an audience at the American Constitution Society that was obviously not sympathetic to Thomas:

Justice Thomas is the one justice in the building that literally knows every employee’s name, every one of them. And not only does he know their names, he remembers their families’ names and histories, He is the first one who will go up to someone when you’re walking with him and say, ‘Is your son okay? How’s your daughter doing in college?’ He’s the first one that, when my stepfather died, sent me flowers in Florida. He is a man who cares deeply about the court as an institution, and about people.

Of course, Sotomayor noted that she and Thomas have very different philosophies, but fundamentally, “we share a common understanding about people and kindness towards them.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/brooklyn-venue-cancels-planned-john-hinckley-jr-concert/

A Brooklyn venue set to host a concert by John Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate former president Ronald Reagan in 1981, on Wednesday canceled the planned performance.

Hinckley was granted an unconditional release from all remaining court restrictions on June 1, and the release went into effect on Wednesday. Hinckley shot and injured Reagan and three others, including former press secretary James Brady, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity and admitted to a mental hospital. In recent years Hinckley has recorded songs and uploaded them to his YouTube channel, and was planning to do what he has called a “redemption tour” this summer.

Concert space Market Hotel announced the decision to cancel a performance by Hinckley scheduled for July 8 on Instagram and other social media outlets. The concert was already sold out.

The venue said the concert was initially booked through a “third-party promoter,” and that one reason for hosting the show was to show that “mental health issues and a criminal past” can be “atoned for.”

“There was a time when a place could host a thing like this, maybe a little offensive, and the reaction would be ‘it’s just a guy playing a show, who does it hurt — it’s a free country.’ We aren’t living in that kind of free country anymore, for better or for worse,” Market Hotel said in its statement, stressing that Hinckley’s scheduled performance would not “practically” harm anyone.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers

One of the most powerful yet unremarked-upon drivers of our current wars over definitions of gender is a concerted push by members of one of the richest families in the United States to transition Americans from a dimorphic definition of sex to the broad acceptance and propagation of synthetic sex identities (SSI). Over the past decade, the Pritzkers of Illinois, who helped put Barack Obama in the White House and include among their number former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, current Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, appear to have used a family philanthropic apparatus to drive an ideology and practice of disembodiment into our medical, legal, cultural, and educational institutions.

I first wrote about the Pritzkers, whose fortune originated in the Hyatt hotel chain, and their philanthropy directed toward normalizing what people call “transgenderism” in 2018. I have since stopped using the word “transgenderism” as it has no clear boundaries, which makes it useless for communication, and have instead opted for the term SSI, which more clearly defines what some of the Pritzkers and their allies are funding—even as it ignores the biological reality of “male” and “female” and “gay” and “straight.”

The creation and normalization of SSI speaks much more directly to what is happening in American culture, and elsewhere, under an umbrella of human rights. With the introduction of SSI, the current incarnation of the LGBTQ+ network—as distinct from the prior movement that fought for equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans, and which ended in 2020 with Bostock v. Clayton County, finding that LGBTQ+ is a protected class for discrimination purposes—is working closely with the techno-medical complex, big banks, international law firms, pharma giants, and corporate power to solidify the idea that humans are not a sexually dimorphic species—which contradicts reality and the fundamental premises not only of “traditional” religions but of the gay and lesbian civil rights movements and much of the feminist movement, for which sexual dimorphism and resulting gender differences are foundational premises.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/17/democrats-selective-outrage-over-insurrections/

To listen to House Democrats’—and Liz Cheney’s and Adam Kinzinger’s, but I repeat myself—shrieks of hysteria from the opening nights of the January 6 House Select Committee dais is to hearken back to the Soviet-era show trials of yesteryear. Vladimir Lenin, as the veteran conservative commentator Roger Kimball reminds us, referred to them as “model trials,” wherein the “aim isn’t to discover the truth—which was supposedly already known—but to stage a propagandist exhibition.”

For Democrats, the aim of the January 6 committee’s “propagandist exhibition” is twofold: First, to attempt (in vain) to distract a besieged citizenry from the myriad problems now tearing asunder the country, under their leadership, in this midterm election year; and second, to lay the foundation for a Justice Department indictment against the 45th president that could hamstring his efforts to seek a second term come 2024.

To anyone paying even a modicum of attention—and I’d recommend no more than that—to the committee’s theatrics, it is obvious that the game is rigged. Consider as but one data point how Cheney, who will be looking for a new job come January, deliberately edited Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” exhortation from that fateful rally to omit the fact that he urged his supporters to make their way to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically.” 

Or how about the fact that the committee has thus far made no effort to subpoena the families of the roughly 800 people who have been arrested—and sometimes placed in solitary confinement, per columnist Julie Kelly’s exceptional reporting at American Greatness—for wandering in and traipsing around the Capitol, often shepherded right in by Capitol Police? Curious, that. A legitimate committee interested in investigation and arriving at the truth would surely want to call some of those families as witnesses. Perhaps that hypothetical legitimate committee would also be interested in hearing from the family of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran fatally shot on that day by a subsequently exonerated Capitol Police officer. Alas.

Instead, to take Democrats at their word—an always dubious endeavor—is to believe that January 6, 2021, represented the closest thing to an “insurrection” since the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. To be sure, some—a very small minority—of the protesters who made their way into the Capitol on that day did so with malicious intent. And that very small minority should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But as a whole, January 6 looks something like a limper version of the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, which amounts to no more than an asterisk in the high school history textbooks.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/17/a-cretinous-beltway-reproduction-of-a-stalinist-show-trial/

If one watches episodic police and detective dramas, there often occurs a scene wherein a culprit is apprehended and charged as an accomplice “after the fact” for helping to cover up the crime. In the British equivalent of such shows, the police use the phrase “perverting the course of justice.” The bottom line is, if one aids in concealing, distracting, or diverting attention from the criminal act to prevent its detection, one is guilty of participating in a criminal enterprise, whether it be before or after the fact.

The House of Representatives’ January 6 committee has been called many things, such as a failed TV pilot, but sadly one knows what the committee is not and was never intended to be, courtesy of Victor Davis Hanson. As for the events of January 6 and its aftermath, the diligent and intrepid work of American Greatness’ Julie Kelly is essential reading.

Regarding the motivation behind the committee, one is to damage Donald Trump’s prospects in 2024, which the committee is in fact abetting by driving his base to rally around him. (Of course, this could well be the Democrats’ covert hope, as many of them, rightly or wrongly, consider him the most beatable GOP nominee.) Another motive is to deflect public attention from Joe Biden and the Democrats’ disastrous economy. (Good luck with that). 

Yet, in conjunction with current developments in an ongoing criminal investigation and upon further reflection following this cretinous Beltway reproduction of a Stalinist show trial, these Democrats’ hearings have a far more subversive motive: namely, concealing and preventing the detection of their own party’s weaponization of the federal government’s police and surveillance powers against its opponents, most notably in the instance of “Russiagate.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-patent-gift-to-beijing-world-trade-organization-intellectual-property-china-11655498904?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The World Trade Organization was created to protect free-trade rules to spread prosperity. Now it’s becoming a vehicle to raid U.S. innovation. See Friday’s agreement by the WTO’s 164 members that lets developing countries, including China, steal intellectual property for Covid vaccines.

The White House is flogging the deal as a diplomatic victory. But it’s an enormous defeat for U.S. national interests that will benefit China and set a precedent that erodes intellectual property protection. This won’t be the last time global grifters seek to pilfer U.S. technology.

The WTO fight began in fall 2020 when India and South Africa submitted a resolution to suspend IP protection for Covid vaccines, therapeutics and tests. They quickly rallied support from low-income countries and progressives who complained about a lack of “equity.” Never mind that the U.S. and Europe financed the development of these technologies.

Succumbing to pressure from the left, President Biden endorsed an IP waiver. He also undercut European allies who opposed the patent giveaway. And for what? Vaccine makers had already committed billions of doses to developing countries. Now the world is awash in vaccine doses and tens of millions are thrown out because low-income countries lack the healthcare infrastructure to distribute them. This makes the WTO agreement all the more perplexing.

https://www.city-journal.org/climate-mccarth

President Biden has deputized White House climate-change advisor Gina McCarthy to snuff out reckless talk on global warming. McCarthy, speaking at a virtual event hosted June 9 by Axios, said it is time for social media companies to crack down on climate “disinformation” online.

But however wrong, damaging, and mendacious climate-change alarmists like New York magazine columnist David Wallace-Wells and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be, they deserve, like anyone else, the freedom to say their piece. Though such figures have certainly misled Americans with their doomsday predictions, their right to expression ought not to be infringed. McCarthy has stepped beyond her mandate by overzealously seeking to keep climate debate within approved guardrails.

I jest, of course. It is not the exaggerations from Ocasio-Cortez or Wallace-Wells that find themselves in the crosshairs of the White House. Biden’s climate attack dog is hounding good-faith challenges to the administration’s policy recommendations and skeptical arguments about the viability of a renewables-only energy policy.

At the Axios event—dubbed “A Conversation on Battling Misinformation”—McCarthy called on tech companies to “really jump in” against allegedly inaccurate claims about the costs and benefits of different approaches to managing climate change. “Now it has moved from denial,” McCarthy said, “but the dark money is still there. The fossil fuel companies are still basically trying their best to make sure that people don’t understand the challenge of climate.” McCarthy then suggested that not only scientific dissent but also debate over what technologies are cost-effective is beyond the bounds of civil discourse. “What the industry is now doing is seeding doubt about the costs associated with [renewables] and whether they work or not,” she said. “We have to get tighter. We have to get better at communicating. And frankly, the tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation.”