RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-constitutional-rights-and-freedoms-trump-manners-and-civility/

Long before Donald Trump berated Ukrainian president Volodymir Zelenskyy, the president has been criticized for his lack of decorum, manners, politesse, and political “norms.” From snubbing Hillary Clinton during his first inaugural address, to discarding “diplomatic niceties” when talking with foreign leaders,” as the AP put it in 2019, Trump’s boorishness and vulgarity has been the Dems’ go-to smear.

But complaints about manners and proper behavior generally reflect the mores and sensibilities of privileged elites defined by birth, wealth, and credentials––all policed by professional and political guilds. In a democratic republic in which all citizens are politically free and equal, such rules often function as gate-keepers to keep hoi polloi in their place, at the expense of crafting policies that serve national interests and security. Worse, they are tools for silencing rival factions’ free speech rights by question-begging labels like “misinformation” or “hate-speech.”

Ever since the birth of democracy in ancient Athens and its enfranchisement of the poor and uneducated, the issue of free public speech had been contested. Indeed, empowering the citizen masses to vote in elections, openly deliberate and speak out about policy, and hold office, was the heart of democracy, the public confirmation of the citizens’ freedom and equality––as the extant ancient antidemocratic complaints from antiquity illustrate.

Moreover, to protect the right of free speech the Athenians had very few restrictions on insults and mockery.  Ancient comedy, performed at state-sponsored religious festivals, and managed by citizens, was also a political institution unbridled by rules of decorum. Classicist K.J. Dover writes of comedy in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. that “every Athenian politician we know of from historical sources was accused by comic playwrights of being ugly, diseased, prostituted perverts, the sons of whores by foreigners who bribed their way into citizenship.”

Nor was it just poetic license: political debate in the Athenian Assembly, the legislative body of the state, was just as vulgar. Sordid sexual practices, disreputable parentage, and taking foreign bribes were standard charges made in speeches, including in trials. As the philosopher Democritus said, “Freedom of speech is the sign of freedom.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/12/make-work-great-again-as-doge-cuts-majority-want-govt-workers-treated-same-as-those-in-private-sector-ii-tipp-poll/

The Trump administration’s push to streamline the bureaucracy and boost the productivity of federal employees has struck a nerve among voters. A substantial majority of Americans now believe that federal workers deserve the same treatment as private-sector workers, according to the I&I/TIPP Poll.

The national online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from Feb. 24-26, asked 1,434 adults the following question: “Should federal employees be treated differently than private-sector workers in terms of pay, benefits, and job protections?” The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

The answer was a resounding “no.” Of those queried, 65% said “no, they should be treated the same.” Just 22% answered, “yes, they should receive more.” Another 13% responded “not sure.”

The responses by political affiliation showed this is a non-partisan issue down the line. Among Democrats, 63% answered “no,” while only 25% said “yes.” Republicans weren’t much different: 66% said “no,” 24% said “yes.” Independents, a bit surprisingly, were strongest in their response, with 70% saying “no,” and just 14% giving a “yes” to the poll.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/senate-democrats-stand-with-pro-hamas-columbia-grad-free-mahmoud-khalil/?utm_source=recirc-

EXCERPT

Khalil was a leader of last spring’s pro-Hamas protests and just last week participated in the Barnard protest in which activists were handing out Hamas propaganda booklets justifying the October 7 attacks.  It’s fair to debate where the line is between free speech and due process on one end and enforcement of immigration laws and protection of Jewish students on the other end. As much as I loathe Khalil, I’m still working through those issues myself. But Democrats aren’t making a tempered argument that they disagree with Khalil but still think his actions are protected under the First Amendment — they are lionizing him. It’s quite revealing as to whom they consider their core constituency to suddenly turn a pro-Hamas activist into a cause célèbre.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/whats-the-best-argument-for-columbia-agitators-arrest-and-deportation/

For now, the Trump administration is trying to do what can be done within the confines of existing law. That law, construed properly, authorizes the government to exclude and deport pro-jihadist agitators.

Earlier today, we posted my piece about the Trump administration’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident alien (LPR) — i.e., a green card holder — who was reportedly born in Syria but claims Palestinian ancestry. Khalil has been a prominent figure in the pro-Hamas agitation at Columbia — as late as last week when he reportedly posed as a mediator between the university and “protesters” who occupied a building at Barnard College — an unlawful enterprise that resulted in nine arrests (Khalil was not among them). That uprising was evidently triggered by Barnard’s expulsion of two students who, hiding behind masks, interrupted a “History of Modern Israel” class by barging in and strewing Jew-hatred flyers around the room.

Early this afternoon, President Trump posted on his Truth Social site that the arrest of Khalil, whom he described as “a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University,” was “the first of many to come,” and that the administration would “find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”

The familiar array of Islamist organizations and their media and Democratic Party allies is rallying to Khalil’s defense. The agitator’s apologists contend that his arrest and the government’s plan to deport him are illegal. A lawyer for Khalil has filed a suit in Manhattan federal court (the Southern District of New York) to try to block deportation and compel his release. Khalil’s allies are concerned about reports that, although he was arrested in Manhattan where he was residing, the Trump Homeland Security Department has already whisked him to a holding facility in Louisiana — perhaps hoping to deport him before the courts can intervene, or at least to try to litigate any lawsuits in a district the administration hopes will be more friendly than the SDNY.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/11/one-fact-missing-from-every-doge-story/

The next time you hear someone complaining that DOGE is “slashing” federal spending or “dismantling” the government, pay close attention. There will almost certainly be an important fact left out: The gargantuan federal deficit.

Every day brings a new sob story about how someone is being hurt by Elon Musk’s chainsaw because some federal program is being shut down, or because a precious federal job has been axed.

Never in any of these is any context provided. And in this case, context is everything.

By the time President Donald Trump took office – four months into the new fiscal year (which started last October), the federal government was already $840 billion in the red. That’s a 58% increase from the prior year.

If all goes well, the deficit for this year will total $1.9 trillion, according to the Treasury Department, which would be the third annual increase.

The result is that the national debt is now $37 trillion – more than double what it was a decade ago. Interest on the debt took off like a rocket under Joe Biden.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/10/trumps-democratic-allies/

Former Clinton strategist James Carville has reinvented himself at age 80 as a sage Democrat podcaster. His predictions—remember, a victorious Kamala Harris?—are usually wrong. He enjoys engaging in public duels with celebrities to gain online clicks and media appearances.

Yet sometimes he appears judicious in his effort to return his party to the Clinton glory days of 1992-2000, before the takeover of the party by the lunatic left. That said, he too has become part of the new left nihilism he supposedly despises.

Most recently, Dr. Carville diagnosed Donald Trump as suffering from tertiary syphilis. Carville’s “proof” was his identification of a bruise on Trump’s much-used shaking hand, along with his supposed brain dementia. As confirmation, Carville described Trump as a “fat f—ing slob” with a “beached whale body.” So, a once top Democratic strategist has gone from his 1992 iconic campaign reminder, “It’s the economy, stupid,” to smearing Trump as a fat slob with syphilis. Carville’s descent sums up his entire party.

Meanwhile, the congressional Democratic opposition finds itself loudly and proudly standing with only 20-30 percent of the American people on matters from biological males competing in female sports to an open border. For years, Democrats claimed the lack of “comprehensive immigration reform” prevented them from securing the border and stopping a 10-12 million influx of illegal aliens. And then they went quiet when Trump, without any new legislation, simply enforced existing immigration statutes and nearly eliminated all illegal entries.

Defeated candidate Kamala Harris is still trying to reassure donors that she did not know how she blew millions of dollars in last-minute 2024 campaign gifts by paying off the likes of Oprah, Al Sharpton, and Cardi B for interviews and endorsements while flying young staffers around the country on rented private jets.

The Democratic Congress under Chuck Schumer and Hakim Jeffries demonstrates their opposition to Trump by cutting videos in which party luminaries promise to stop the “sh-t.” Fellow Democratic congresswomen rivaled them with a worse ad in which they dressed in macho kickboxing attire and clumsily gyrated as if they were punching out their conservative opponents.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-long-shadow-of-hillary-clinton/

While one cannot blame all of the world’s problems on the former first lady and senator, much of the trouble in Ukraine is related to her actions.

Volodymyr Zelensky was once a comedian. One of the hallmarks of great comedians is their ability to read the room. When my high school had a very ugly and contentious merger with its sister school (New Trier East and West), a traveling group from Second City came to perform. One of the comedians was asked about the merger, which had made its way into the local papers. He whipped out his Kipling and, without losing a beat, stated, “East is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet!” He was met with wild applause by the crowd.

The president of Ukraine did not know how to read the Oval Office on Friday. Zelensky supposedly was coached by Obama retreads Susan Rice, Victoria Nuland, Tony Blinken and others. If the story is true and they told Ukraine’s president to be tough with Trump, he got some bad advice. One of the strangest features of American governance is the potential for whiplash changes in policy. In dictatorships or even European-style coalition rule, things either remain unchanged or change at a glacial pace. The winner of Germany’s recent elections promised to deal with the problems of large-scale immigration. Once he saw that he could form a coalition without AfD, he said the status quo wasn’t so bad. But not in America. When you change parties, policies can spin around 180 degrees in a second. Somehow, the Obama brain trust tried to convince Zelensky that it was just like the days of Biden, though it was not.

If one wanted to trace a useful starting point for the destruction of Russian and Ukrainian armies, I would suggest the day after the 2016 election. Without evidence, Hilary Clinton and John Podesta claimed that Donald Trump was a Putin stooge and that through Russian interference in the US election, he was elected president. If you could get the ex-secretary of state away from her glass of Chardonnay for a few minutes, she would no doubt repeat the same: the election was stolen from her, and Vladimir Putin was the culprit. These claims had profoundly negative repercussions in the world. The first was the “Russian Collusion” investigation that wasted two and a half years of the Trump administration. Nothing was found, and the millions spent on Robert Mueller’s dream team were wasted, other than it hamstrung the president and supercharged the support, often bipartisan, for Ukraine, a country known for widespread corruption.

https://tomklingenstein.com/elite-holdouts-will-keep-wokeness-alive/

While we’ve since learned that Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai’s legendary quip about the outcome of the French Revolution being “too soon to tell” was the result of a mistranslation rather than a zen-like sweep of history, there’s something wise about taking the long view.

The defeat of some of the most obvious excesses of “wokeness” — both in policy, through a flurry of Trump executive orders, and among the public, as seen in recent polling — is certainly cause for celebration (and, for those of us who’ve been on the battlefield in large or small capacities, a sense of accomplishment). Perhaps the greatest sign of its waning power in the public consciousness is that it has, finally, become ridiculous; its association has traversed the distance from earnest righteousness to a source of mockery.

The Right should be cautious, though, as political and social battles are rarely (if ever) won for all time. “Liberalism” and “Progressivism” are two labels that required multiple rebrands across several generations due to failing fortunes with the public — and yet maintained enough elite support to return, just as powerfully as before.

Those of us on the Right understand that what’s now known as “wokeness” isn’t new or a heretical deviation; rather, it is the necessary outgrowth of the Left’s assumptions and assertions about the world, inseparable from its conception of “progress.” Most ordinary Americans, though, are busy with their lives and haven’t traced the Left’s radicalism as it lurched from college campuses in the 1970s into the mainstream of elite consensus.

The Right’s smarter activists understand that, since its inception, the Left fails when its excesses are made flesh. For example, women’s sports and childhood medical transitions were crucial battlegrounds in the war against “wokeness,” as they exposed the radicalism of gender ideology in ways that didn’t require lengthy philosophical explanations. Even in defeat, Americans need to be shown the horrors of childhood medical transitions just as the victorious Allies needed to remind the world of the Nazi death camps: the fight was a righteous one, and the enemies deserved destruction for what they’d done.

Given enough time and distance, however, a period of revisionism always arrives, and the battle must be taken up anew.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5180888-democrats-missteps-trump-hate

Democrats did not just lose an election in 2024 — apparently, they lost their minds, too.  

Consider, for instance, how they kicked off Women’s History Month — by voting against protecting women and girls in sports, against guaranteeing them a fair playing field.   

That’s right: Every single Democrat voted down the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would prohibit federally funded schools from allowing male transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports. 

It would prevent girls and women from being injured by bigger, stronger biological males. And, just as importantly, it would prevent girls who have worked like crazy to excel in sports from being humiliated by a men dressed like women. 

Take, for example, the basketball game that took place a year ago between two Massachusetts teams — the Collegiate Charter School of Lowell and KIPP Academy in Lynn. A transgender player for KIPP, at six feet tall and sporting facial hair, injured multiple opposing female players, eventually forcing Collegiate to forfeit the game.  

Or consider the gruesome injury sustained by Payton McNabb in a 2022 volleyball match, when a transgender opponent spiked the ball into her head and nearly killed her. Some 79 percent of Americans, including 67 percent of Democrats, favor keeping men out of women’s sports and locker rooms, according to New York Times-Ipsos polling.  

So why fall on your sword by defeating a bill that so clearly aligns with the preferences of voters?

This is not the only recent foolish move by Democrats. In anticipation of President Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday, 22 senators in the Democratic caucus broadcast videos of themselves all reading the exact same script, which starts with the words, “S— that ain’t true,” mocking Trump’s campaign pledge to bring down prices on Day 1. Conservatives on social media quickly roasted the copycat stunt, and rightly so. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/03/the_enduring_battle_over_merit.html

The push for group-based preferences that began with affirmative action in the 1960s and evolved into today’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) movement is now in decline. Merit, not skin color, sex or sexual peccadilloes, may soon decide everything from hiring to college admissions. Hopefully, America’s half century of failed social engineering will be replaced with what Thomas Jefferson called a “Natural Aristocracy.”

Nevertheless, the battle over merit is far from over. The sad reality is that the anti-merit impulse runs deep in human history. Yes, merit has promoted civilization, but anti-merit identity politics is hardly a historical abnormality. Nepotism and ethnocentrism, both of which are antithetical to merit, are probably hardwired into our DNA; the desire for meritocracy is not.

To appreciate this aversion to ability, consider what occurred in Nazi Germany. On April 7, 1933, just two months after assuming political power, Adolf Hitler issued his infamous Law for the Restoration of Professional Civil Service ordering the immediate dismissal of any government official who had at least one Jewish grandparent or opposed the Nazi regime. Since all German academics were state employees, this edict applied to every professor along with judges, police officers, and countless bureaucrats.

A mass exodus of researchers and professors ensued, some of whom while not themselves Jewish had Jewish spouses. Others who were Jewish or had Jewish ancestry were not Germans, but as residents of nearby countries, they saw the handwriting on the wall and fled.

German physics was devastated. Among those escaping were Hans Bethe, Felix Bloch, Max Born, Albert Einstein, James Franck, Otto Frisch, Fritz London, Lise Meitner, Erwin Schrödinger, Otto Stern, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Victor Weisskopf, and Eugene Wigner. Three—Einstein, Franck, and Schrödinger—were Nobel Prizes winners and five others would eventually receive that prize. Several, notably Bethe and Teller, played major roles in the Manhattan Project or contributed to the physics underlying the atomic bomb. The exodus was a windfall for countries accepting the refugees—some 2500 of these scientists and academics fled to the United Kingdom. U.S. patents increased by 31 percent after 1933 in fields common among German refugees. When the eminent German scientist Max Planck personally pleaded with Hitler not to fire Jewish physicists, Hitler said that the Reich did not need them.