RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://americanmind.org/salvo/freedom-for-freedoms-sake/

Do we have a goal in mind as we begin a new global war?

“In standing up to Russia and China, are we standing up for freedom of speech and equality before the law, or for “antiracism” and “equity”? Are we mobilizing the totality of our cultural and economic might in the name of traditional nationalism and traditional religion, or of globalism and woke identity politics?”

EXCERPTS

“….. I was in a graduate school class on revolutionary film in Cold War Latin America. Images of Che and Fidel were juxtaposed against those of black civil rights protesters being fire-hosed and Bull Connor’s shepherds snarling and taking down marchers. Much time had passed, but the feeling was the same.

Eventually the intuitions became thoughts; the raw emotions took the shape of ideas. The way I saw America wasn’t how others saw it. The ideas I thought represented America were not the same ones that others held.

In the Cold War, domestic and foreign dissent over America’s role as guarantor of the postwar order of liberal internationalism overlapped like concentric circles and amplified one another. In the nineties, both voices of contention were dissembled beneath the veneer of victory and history’s “end.”

The esprit de corps and bipartisan consensus around arming and defending Ukraine is eerily reminiscent—for many of us, I suspect—of the same “consensus,” composed mostly of the two political parties and mainstream talking-head media outlets, that enabled the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and before that, the war to liberate Kosovo from the Serbs and the Serbian identity, and, before that, the first Gulf War. The heady heights of liberal internationalism, however, can easily yield to the depths of self-doubt. As much as it pains me to acknowledge the incisiveness of beatniks and hippies, the question still looms, just as urgently—if not more so—a half-century later: What are we fighting for?

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/its-ok-im-not-a-biologist-either/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

These days, questioning the efficacy of a vaccine is a nihilistic, anti-scientific assault on society itself. And yet refusing to define the meaning of “woman” — a question a peasant in the medieval world could have correctly, and straightforwardly, answered — is treated as a completely normal moment by the press. Ketanji Brown Jackson says she “not a biologist,” admitting that the definition of “woman” is physiological and not psychological, to avoid offending progressives. She, of course, knows well what a woman is. The fact that such a silly question can’t be directly answered reflects the insanity of the political moment. There is a chasm between arguing that a “society should make accommodations for transgender Americans” and “men can get pregnant,” and yet Democrats are now going with the latter.

Jackson’s answer is also a reminder that the liberals’ rock-ribbed belief in “science” often relies on reverse-engineered junk science concocted to prop up trendy new theories. Liberals are no more interested in science than anyone else. Scaremongering over GMOs, which are not only completely harmless but a lifesaving technological advancement, is anti-science. Opposing fracking, which is as safe as any other means of extracting fossil fuels, is anti-science. Please tell me more about your homeopathic organic cures, enlightened Democrat. However inconvenient it is for proponents of abortion, denying that life begins at conception — “I have a religious view that I set aside when ruling on cases,” went Jackson’s crafty answer — is also anti-science. As is the notion that a person’s perspective can determine whether something is alive or their gender. And you don’t have to be a biologist to understand why.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/judge-jacksons-curious-agnosticism-on-who-is-a-woman/

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson spent much of yesterday contradicting various progressive pieties and embracing the theoretical basis and methodological assumptions of originalism, so it seems telling that the two places where she was unable to cross the red lines of leftist ideology were in defining who a woman is and defining when human life begins. As Maddy notes, it is particularly odd for Judge Jackson to put off the question of defining a woman by saying she’s not a biologist, given that the biological answer is the easiest way of all to answer the question (one wonders how many progressive biologists would duck the question by saying it’s not a biological inquiry).

It’s also deeply ironic, given how much of the hearing was devoted to encomia to Jackson specifically as the first black woman nominated for the job. The irony runs deeper: Jackson herself repeatedly used the word “woman” in her own testimony. She told Senator Dianne Feinstein that “Roe and Casey are the settled law of the Supreme Court concerning the right to terminate a woman’s pregnancy.” When Feinstein asked her, “What it would mean to have four women serving on the Supreme Court for the first time in history?” Jackson responded:

Thank you, Senator. I think it’s extremely meaningful. One of the things that having diverse members of the court does is it provides for the opportunity for role models. Since I was nominated to this position, I have received so many notes and letters and photos from little girls around the country who tell me that they are so excited for this opportunity, and that they have thought about the law in new ways. Because I am a woman, because I am a black woman, all of those things people have said have been really meaningful to them. And we want, I think, as a country for everyone to believe that they can do things like sit on the Supreme Court. And so having meaningful numbers of women and people of color, I think matters. I also think that it — it supports public confidence in the judiciary when you have different people, because we have such a diverse society.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ketanji-brown-jackson-biden-supreme-court-pick-andrew-mccarthy

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats incessantly remind us that the historic milestone marked by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination is that she would become the Supreme Court’s first Black woman.

Yet, how historically significant can it be if she can’t say what a woman is?

For all her appeal – and in 12 grueling hours of testimony on Tuesday, Judge Jackson’s intellect and charm were on full display – the nominee is dodgy. Though a highly accomplished – indeed, a historic – woman, she testified that she can’t “provide a definition” of what a woman is.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., even tried to help, spoon-feeding her the wisdom of an iconic progressive, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that “physical differences between men and women … are enduring. The two sexes are not fungible.” But Jackson was unmoved – if there is a difference between men and women, she’s claims she is unable to discern it.

See what seven years at Harvard can do for you!

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/james-clapper-conspiracy-theorist-russiagate/

Last week, the New York Times decided that now might be a good time, amid the cacophony of war abroad and soaring inflation at home, to come clean about the Hunter Biden laptop story.

On March 16, the Times published a report on the junior Biden’s messy tax affairs in which, a full twenty-four paragraphs in, they acknowledged the authenticity of the emails and files contained on the now-infamous laptop. It is worth recalling that when the New York Post first reported on the laptop and its tawdry contents — which included, among other things, indications of kickback schemes and influence-peddling involving Hunter and his father — fifty-one former high ranking members of the US intelligence community published a letter dismissing the story as having “the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Twitter and Facebook, essentially acting as surrogates for the Biden campaign, also banned the dissemination of the Post report in the run-up to the 2020 election.

Most of the fifty-one signatories of that letter, which included former CIA directors Leon Panetta, Michael Hayden and John Brennan, had no comment when reached by the Post last week. But one of the most prominent signatories, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, told the Post there would be no apology coming from him: “Yes, I stand by the statement made AT THE TIME, and would call attention to its 5th paragraph. I think sounding such a cautionary note AT THE TIME was appropriate.”