RUTHFULLY YOURS

The monarch could not change the law according to his will and whim. To do that, he needed the permission of his subjects, or at least those of his subjects who controlled the established institutions. This was the lasting significance of the Magna Carta, whose 800th anniversary we celebrate today
In Winston Churchill’s famous speech at Harvard University in 1943 on the common ties of the English-speaking peoples, he defined the bond in terms of three main things: law, language and literature. Indeed, when he elaborated on what he meant, he spoke mainly of concepts derived from and guaranteed by English law:

Law, language, literature—these are considerable factors. Common conceptions of what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play, especially to the weak and poor, a stern sentiment of impartial justice, and above all a love of personal freedom … these are the common conceptions on both sides of the ocean among the English-speaking peoples.

Moreover, these legally-derived cultural values were appreciated not only by those people of direct British descent. They were transportable to other countries.

As a man with direct personal experience of imperial rule in the first half of the twentieth century, Churchill knew these values could even have a major influence on countries with radically different cultural traditions. In the days of the British Empire, the best means of establishing a successful and lasting imperial regime was to give it English law. Once it had this, an English colony, dependency or protectorate, whether established by settler immigrants, by military conquest, or international treaty, quickly felt the benefits. British imperial rule in many parts of Asia, Africa and the Americas was not representative or democratic, but it was nonetheless orderly, largely benign, and usually fair. Thanks to English law, most British colonial officials delivered good government.

It’s hard to get 96 percent of people to agree on anything, but last month’s Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that 96 percent of those surveyed believe we are in for a summer of racial unrest. In the wake of Ferguson and Baltimore, it’s time for some reflection on how we got here.

This year marks two significant anniversaries. In August 1965, the Watts riots broke out in Los Angeles, leading to 34 deaths and $300 million in property damage. Coming after the passage of well-intentioned Great Society welfare programs, the riots made clear that government spending wasn’t going to solve all the problems of urban America.

Indeed, another 50th anniversary we mark this year is that of a seminal work that helped explain why government would be no panacea: Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “The Negro Family: A Call for National Action.” Published in 1965 and known as “the Moynihan Report,” it burst many bubbles of liberal thinking.

On June 11, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) released a report on a stunning new concession offered by the Obama administration to break a deadlock in the Iran nuclear talks.

The deadlock stems from Tehran’s refusal to permit inspections of military facilities or answer questions about past nuclear-weapons-related work (known as “possible military dimensions” or PMD in U.N.-speak). With the clock ticking down on a June 30 deadline for a nuclear agreement, the refusal of Iranian leaders to budge on these issues has become a political problem for President Obama, who said in April that Iran has agreed to “the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history.” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has said the nuclear agreement will allow “anytime, anywhere inspections of any and every Iranian facility.”

Activists continue to deny the importance of proactive community policing, even as shootings increase.

I recently observed in these pages that violent crime is rising sharply in many cities. Having spoken with police officers and commanders, I hypothesized that the growing reluctance of cops to engage in proactive policing may help explain the spike in violent crime. The past nine months have seen unprecedented antipolice agitation dedicated to the proposition that bias infects policing in predominantly black communities, a message echoed at the highest reaches of government and the media. Officers in urban areas are encountering high levels of resistance and hostility when they try to make an arrest.

The U.S. makes more concessions to Iran in a prelude to a nuclear deal.

The Obama Administration has long insisted that any nuclear deal will have no effect on U.S. determination to stop Iran’s regional ambitions or support for terrorism. As the political desire for a deal grows more urgent, however, this claim is proving to be hollow.

Consider Hayya Bina, or “Let’s Go,” a Lebanese civil-society initiative founded in 2005 by publisher and producer Lokman Slim. Hayya Bina works largely with Lebanon’s Shiites on a variety of health, environmental and citizenship issues, largely as a way to offer a moderate alternative to Hezbollah’s efforts to dominate that community. The group has received modest funding from the State Department and groups like the International Republican Institute.

But as the Journal’s Jay Solomon reported last week, the State Department sent Hayya Bina a letter, dated April 10, which “requests that all activities intended [to] foster an independent moderate Shiite voice be ceased immediately and indefinitely.” To underscore the point, the letter added that Hayya Bina “must eliminate funding for any of the above referenced activity.”

“Mrs. Clinton’s speech should bust any remaining illusions that she will return her party to her husband’s 1990s centrism. She is running as an Obama-Warren Democrat, which means that is also how she would govern.”

Any doubt about Hillary Clinton’s campaign strategy was put to rest on Saturday when she re-launched her presidential bid with a speech that Elizabeth Warren might have given. The former Secretary of State is running to the left even of President Obama, embracing Mr. Obama’s identity politics of race, sex and class but adding Senator Warren’s economic themes.

“The financial industry and many multinational corporations have created huge wealth for a few by focusing too much on short-term profit and too little on long-term value—too much on complex trading schemes and stock buybacks, too little on investments in new businesses, jobs and fair compensation,” she said on Roosevelt Island in New York City.

So here is Mrs. Clinton’s answer to the dilemma that any Democrat faces after the Obama Presidency: How do you explain seven years of historically slow economic growth and stagnant incomes?

One answer would be to return to her husband’s economic pragmatism, but that would put Mrs. Clinton at odds with most of today’s Democratic Party. So she’s going for the Warren-Obama strategy of blaming economic underperformance on the wealthy, big business, Wall Street and the Republican Party.

In theory, Middle East Studies programs are a good idea. One of the biggest impediments to countering modern jihadism has been the lack of historical knowledge about the region and Islam. But even the attention and urgency that followed the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have not led to such knowledge. The result has been policies pursued both by Republicans and Democrats that are doomed to fail, as the current chaos in the region attests.

Rather than enlightening citizens and policy-makers, Middle Eastern Studies programs have darkened our understanding. As Martin Kramer documented in his important 2002 study Ivory Towers on Sand [3], most programs have become purveyors not of knowledge but of ideology. Under the influence of literary critic Edward Said’s historically challenged book Orientalism––“a work,” historian Robert Irwin has written [4], “of malignant charlatanry, in which it is hard to distinguish honest mistakes from willful misrepresentations”­­––Middle East Studies programs, Kramer writes, “came under a take-no-prisoners assault, which rejected the idea of objective standards, disguised the vice of politicization as the virtue of commitment, and replaced proficiency with ideology.” The ideology, of course, comprised the old Marxist narrative of Western colonial and imperial crimes, a Third Worldism that idealizes the dark-skinned, innocent “other” victimized by Western depredations, and the juvenile romance of revolutionary violence.

Though many have declared the Occupy Wall Street movement a failure, it won a major propaganda victory when it forced the phony political issue of “income inequality” into the national political debate, according to one of its leaders in a new article.

The article, titled The Triumph of Occupy Wall Street [2], appears at the Atlantic, the home of radical leftists, market participants in the racial grievance industry, and mushy moderates.

It was written by radical left-winger Michael Levitin, a co-founder of The Occupied Wall Street Journal, an OWS “affinity group.” (Its website [3] had not been updated in 1,000 days at time of writing.) The article is a mixture of truth and bald-faced lies that slavishly defends a philosophy of failure and a movement that is based on Marxist lies, as David Horowitz and John Perazzo demonstrated in their pamphlet Occupy Wall Street: The Communist Movement Reborn [4]. Despite the various problems with Levitin’s article, he points to an unfortunate side-effect of the short-lived movement: the left has become more bold in its open promotion of communist themes and ideology and is pushing them into mainstream politics like never before.

With a little help from her friendly Dad (Paul) Stella McCartney has made quite a name for herself as an ultra-chic fashion designer. This week she introduced her spring line on Manhattan’s Elizabeth Street with a Cuba-themed garden party.

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara featured among the main props of the soiree, both as mannequins and as live costumed humans who walked around posing for pictures with the ultra-chic models and guests along with the delighted vegetarian hostess.

In keeping with Stella McCartney’s “anti-cruelty” beliefs the event featured strictly vegetarian foodstuffs. None of that musty “generation-gap” stuff for Stella. That stuff is “SOOOO ’60’s” after all. Instead she’s a proud daddy’s girl, and as such a proud vegetarian and PETA spokesperson. Indeed, Stella ritually denounces many fellow fashion designers as “heartless” should leather or– heaven forbid!—fur show up in any of their creations.

One of the speakers slated for the Vatican rollout of the long-awaited Papal document on climate change once said the earth is overpopulated by at least 6 billion people.
The teaching document, called an encyclical, is scheduled for release on June 18 at Vatican City. Perhaps with the exception of the 1968 encyclical on contraception, no Vatican document has been greeted with such anticipation.

The political left is hoping for a document that ties belief in global warming to a religious obligation. Climate skeptics have already started criticizing the document.