RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/portland-what-does-it-mean-david-horowitz/

Perhaps the most emblematic moment in the battles raging in American cities came the other day when Bernie Sanders attacked President Trump’s decision to send federal agents to quell the riots in Portland Oregon. His alleged reason: they bear the earmarks of a “police state.” This, from a man who spent the entire sixty years of his adult life supporting every ruthless, communist police state on the planet – and there were many – and who to this day declares his solidarity with the police states in the West Bank and Gaza run by his terrorist comrades in the PLO and Hamas. Of course these twisted values have made him the most popular Democrat leader.

Our cities are under siege by communists like Bernie and other self-declared enemies of America who have made eminently clear that they are Marxists and their goal is the destruction of our democracy, which they hope to replace with a communist gulag. In the last two months these violent criminals have torched 400 American cities, injured more than a thousand police officers, killed more than a dozen individuals, looted and destroyed billions of dollars worth of downtown real estate and merchandise, all the while demanding the defunding of police departments. This has led to a violent crime wave resulting in the deaths of scores of individuals including at least eight children – all of them black.

Portland is the epicenter of this insurrection, the extent of which America hasn’t witnessed since the Civil War. Every night for the last two months thousands of criminals have attacked Portland’s downtown, firing explosives and wielding machetes, terrorizing its inhabitants, setting fire to its hall of justice, smashing public monuments and calling for the abolition of the United States. Like every other major American city that has been victimized, Portland’s mayhem has been made possible by the actions of a seditious mayor and city council who have refused to perform the first task of government, which is to keep its citizens and their property safe.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/cancel-culture-old-tyranny-new-bottles-bruce-thornton/

The last few weeks we’ve seen programmatically progressive media outlets purging their political bedfellows for deviating from the “woke” party line. Some, like erstwhile New York Times editor James Bennet, confessed and apologized for their alleged sins voluntarily, like an old Bolshevik apparatchik in a show-trial. Others, like Times editor Bari Weiss and Atlantic writer Andrew Sullivan, resigned before they were hustled to the guillotine, at least salvaging some self-respect. 

And it’s not just today’s people and institutions that are facing the baying mobs of mostly callow millennials who pitch a fit over anything that challenges their fragile self-esteem and “smelly little orthodoxies.” For months we’ve watched two-bit anarchists and race-hustlers knocking down monuments from our history as a graphic repudiation of America and its defining principles––a 21st century version of the old Roman damnatio memoriae, in which enemies of the state or emperor were disappeared from history by removing any public reference to them in inscriptions, statues, or books.

Indeed, today’s “cancel culture” is nothing new. It is just the latest manifestation of tyranny: As Aristotle defined it, “arbitrary power . . . which is responsible to no one, and governs all alike, whether equals or betters, with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will. No free man willingly endures such a government.”

Historically, the tyrant has achieved that power by violence, especially against anyone who appear to be a threat to his ambitions or power. Herodotus has a famous anecdote about the tyrant’s use of violence. In the 7th century BC, Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, deliberating over how to keep his power safe from rivals, sent a messenger to Thrasybulus of Miletus asking his advice. Thrasybulus led the messenger into a field of wheat, and as he questioned him during their walk, broke off the tallest ears of grain. Periander got the message: “Kill outstanding citizens.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/29/do-burning-cities-mark-start-of-democrats-civil-war-2-0/

The upsurge in rioting, looting, destruction and violence in cities across the country won’t just peter out, as many hope. Sadly, mainstream media outlets refuse to cover the actual news, while Democratic politicians actually express solidarity with those who are burning down our cities. It’s become obvious to one and all: The left media and so-called progressive Democrats would rather see urban bonfires than lose to Donald Trump in November.

Asked recently about 59 straight days of protests and violence in Portland, New York Rep. Jerry Nadler called reports of Antifa rioting there a “myth.” Not to be outdone, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi likened the federal police sent to quell the disturbances to “Nazis.”

This is today what passes for leadership in the Democratic Party, which since losing in 2016, has undergone an extreme makeover to become the most radical “mainstream” party in the U.S. in modern times. To find its equivalent, you’d have to go back to … let’s see, 1860 and 1861, when the very same Democratic Party convinced 11 states to secede from the union, thus setting off the Civil War.

Plus ça change, as the French would say.

Egged on in 2020 by that same radical party, Antifa, Black Lives Matter and other extremist groups have gone on an unchecked spree. Vandalism, looting, murders and politically motivated beatings have metastasized across the nation, making city after city into unlivable hellholes.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-7-22-soho-forum-presentation-why-libertarians-should-vote-for-trump-in-2020

I hope that many readers watched my online debate for the Soho Forum this evening. Below I am posting a somewhat abbreviated version of my opening statement, together with some of my closing remarks. Note that I made some very substantial deviations from this text in the actual oral presentation. I understand that the full debate — including the presentations of the other debaters — will be posted on the Soho Forum website within a few days.

From my opening statement:

Whom should a Libertarian vote for for President in 2020?  The answer is obvious:  Donald Trump.

The main reason is not quite as obvious.  We have a two party system.  Each of the two parties represents a broad coalition of groups and interests seeking to achieve sufficient votes and in the right places to win a majority of the electoral college in the election.  Because we have a two-party system, if you want to participate meaningfully in a presidential election, you must join one of the two broad coalitions that effectively compete for the presidency.  If you refuse to join one of those two broad coalitions, you are just voluntarily excluding yourself from any effective participation in the process.

The two broad coalitions are called the Republicans and the Democrats.  And thus I submit that your only real choices are Biden and Trump.  Between those two, the choice for a Libertarian of Trump over Biden is extremely compelling.