EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Lost Art of School Debates Deidre Clary and Fiona Mueller

Posted By on November 17th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/education/the-lost-art-of-school-debates/

The post-pandemic socio-political context in which Australia finds itself should stimulate constructive national debate. Key (and often controversial) issues include Indigenous representation in Parliament, national security and defence, immigration, cost of living, energy, health, housing, and workforce planning and productivity.

Debating is part of an intellectual tradition that encourages both linguistic dexterity and thoughtful participation in the democratic process. This approach to teaching and learning – as last-century or last-millennium as it may seem – remains essential to the formation of citizens who can contribute confidently and articulately to a free and civil society.

Galloping along new technological paths in education, including the high-profile tracks of artificial intelligence, extended reality, robotics and online learning, allows little time to consider what to keep and what to let go.

This dilemma is juxtaposed with evidence of generational decline in Australian students’ competence in the English language. There has been a loss of emphasis on the association between the development of sophisticated English language skills, including the capacity and willingness to read regularly and widely, and the requirement for students to produce reasoned arguments (either oral or written) on the basis of thorough research. Such a loss has catastrophic implications for a free and civil society.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Elections Have Consequences: How Trump’s Second Term Challenges the Political Status Quo Democrats assert power after victories, while Republicans compromise—Trump’s 2024 return, with bold Cabinet picks, challenges this norm. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on November 17th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/17/elections-have-consequences-how-trumps-second-term-challenges-the-political-status-quo/

“Elections,” Barack Obama told a group of cowering Republican lawmakers early in 2009, “have consequences.” He then drove the point home by reminding them, “I won.”

In truth, Democrats tend to understand this law of the political universe more clearly than do Republicans.

The usual rule is this: when Democrats win elections, they wield power. When Republicans win elections, they seek, or at least agree to, compromise.

In Suicide of the West, the political philosopher James Burnham quotes the nineteenth-century French writer Louis Veuillot, who summed up the essence of this political dialectic in one elegant sentence. Quand je suis le plus faible, je vous demande la liberté parce que tel est votre principe; mais quand je suis le plus fort, je vous l’ôte, parce que tel est le mien. “When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.”

For examples of the latter, I invite you to ponder the behavior of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, especially the behavior of the despicable Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, these last three and a half years.

Had the Democrats won the 2024 election, we would have seen many more examples of this principle in action. Assuming the Dems had kept the Senate, we would have seen them dispense with the filibuster, thus turning that chamber into what outgoing West Virginian Senator Joe Manchin called “the House on steroids.” They would have packed the Supreme Court, adding a few new “progressive” members to the bench to counter the power of Justices like Clarence Thomas. They likely would have imposed term- or age-limits on the Justices as well.

Elsewhere, I endeavored to provide a brief inventory of the “consequences” of a Harris victory. Donald Trump would have been bankrupted and jailed. It is likely that the same thing would have happened to Elon Musk. Just as John Kerry promised, the First Amendment would have been gutted if not discarded altogether in order to further the censorship and surveillance regime of the woke, progressive elite. A virtual ban on fracking and the mining of coal would have been enacted, further depressing America’s prosperity. The trans insanity of the last decade would have been extended, destroying women’s sports and disfiguring, mentally as well as physically, many thousands of confused teenagers.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Is sovereignty a Jewish priority? – opinion Judaism, Palestinianism, and the right to sovereignty over the Land of Israel. By Moshe Dann

Posted By on November 17th, 2024

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-797390

Based on the Torah, the Jewish people and Judaism are defined by two concepts: (1) Following God’s commandments and the belief in one God, ethical monotheism; (2) Establishing a society based on Jewish sovereignty in Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. Israeli sovereignty, the basis for its national existence as a Jewish state, the homeland of the Jewish people, is defined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948. It incorporated much of UN Resolution 181, passed in 1947, including the rights of its non-Jewish residents. Following the war in 1948-9, Israel was accepted as a member state of the United Nations.

The result of the war was inconclusive. Israel and the Arab countries that had attacked Israel agreed to a ceasefire, and an armistice was signed based on temporary – de facto, not de jure – “borders.” The area that was conquered by Jordan became known as “the West Bank.” However, local Arab terrorists and those from neighboring countries continued to attack Jews.

Since the beginning of its existence as a state, therefore, Israel was faced with a problem: What to do with Arabs who lived under its jurisdiction and did not accept Israeli sovereignty. Many, if not most, still do not. For them, Israel’s survival and victory in the war of 1948-49 was a nakba (catastrophe) – the essence of the Palestinian narrative, and its ideology, Palestinianism.

As a result of the War of Independence, many Arabs fled to other countries, especially to Jordan. Nearly a million became “refugees,” most of whom were cared for by UNRWA, and about 156, 000 who remained in Israel and became Israeli citizens. In addition, as a result of the war, Israel acquired abandoned Arab villages and property, and areas which had not been assigned to Israel in 1948, especially in the Galilee, the Negev, and western Jerusalem – which Israel declared as its capital – with their Arab populations. Arabs still consider these areas as “disputed,” and they oppose any form of Israeli sovereignty.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump II: Challenges Ahead by Amir Taheri

Posted By on November 17th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21119/trump-challenges

The real question, therefore, is what could Trump II do to restore America’s prestige across the globe and reassert itself as the indispensable power that it still is? The answer is: plenty.

In fact, Trump, even if he doesn’t do anything, will repair some of the damage that the past three administrations shaped by Barack Obama have done to US standing and credibility as a world power.

In those 12 years of Obama and Biden, US leaders went around the world to apologize for imaginary injustices done by Americans to various segments of mankind, mused about “leading from behind” and presented the United States as a room service that doesn’t even ask you to sign the bill let alone offer a tip.

Under the three Obama administrations, with Trump I as a brief interlude, the US saw Russia attack and occupy parts of Georgia and annex Crimea and eventually invade Ukraine, and the US did nothing.

Obama drew a red line against the use of chemical weapons to kill Syrian people, but when Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, did so, went into purdah.

To divert attention from the Middle East, Obama conjured the “pivot to Asia” slogan, while letting China grab a bigger chunk of the world, including US markets, in the name of free trade.

Also remember that regardless of what experts or even Trump himself say, the 47th president is likely to be as unpredictable as the 45th one, a feature that helped him in foreign policy last time and may do so again.

What will Donald Trump’s foreign policy look like in his second term?

This is the question currently making the buzz in the commentariat around the world.

Western European pundits claim that Trump will abandon the Ukrainian lamb to the Russian wolf or, at least, force the European shepherd to foot the bill for keeping it half alive.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Would Be Wise To Deliver Regime Change in Iran by Con Coughlin

Posted By on November 17th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21120/trump-iran-regime-change

The October 7, 2023 attacks carried out against Israel by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists…. was the direct result of Tehran’s ability to fund the terrorist movement to the tune of $100 million a year, an operation that would not have been possible without Biden’s lenient attitude towards the ayatollahs.

Trump may come to see as well that, unfortunately, due to the deep-seated commitment of Iran’s regime in exporting its brand of Islam, as enshrined in its constitution, there can be no real long-term peace in the Middle East without regime change, especially if Iran has nuclear weapons — not to mention the global arms race that would follow such an event.

Not only would many of Iran’s neighbours be relieved, but its captive citizens could then be free to choose leaders better aligned with their aspirations. A liberated Iran might even join the Abraham Accords….

Now that Donald Trump has secured his remarkable victory in the US presidential election, supporting regime change in Iran could soon emerge as one of his new administration’s top priorities after he takes office in January.

Trump’s no-nonsense approach to confronting the ayatollahs’ malign influence in the region was one of the defining characteristics during his first term in the White House.

One of his more laudable foreign policy initiatives was to withdraw from the flawed nuclear deal with Iran agreed by former President Barack Obama in 2015.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Things Worth Remembering: The Last Words of Alexei Navalny ‘If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong.’ By Douglas Murray

Posted By on November 17th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/things-worth-remembering-alexi-navalny?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The word historic is overused. It is often deployed for something people will forget within a cycle of news. But sometimes, in these modern times, somebody does something that can genuinely be seen as historic. Something so brave, and so actually stunning, that it will inspire people for generations.

Alexei Navalny’s decision to return to Russia in January 2021 was just such a moment. By then, he had become one of the most open and daring—some might say reckless—critics of Vladimir Putin. And the previous time he had flown to Moscow, he had collapsed midair, poisoned by the deadly nerve agent, Novichok. He had recovered from this assassination attempt in Germany, before boarding the flight home. It was an act of extraordinary courage. I almost wrote that it was suicidal courage, but that term is too loaded. Perhaps better to say fatalistic courage.

The world knows what happened next: Navalny was arrested before he could make it through customs in Moscow, one final time, and charged with various crimes. He was ultimately taken to a remote penal colony in the Arctic Circle, and in true Stalinist style, the Russian authorities announced in February of this year that he had died, at the age of 47.

But Americans could be forgiven for not registering, in the weeks leading up to the recent, febrile elections, the posthumous release of a memoir penned by this brave man. Patriot is a journal of sorts, begun during his recovery in Germany and continuing through his Siberian internment. In it, he explains why he returned to Moscow in 2021.

“I have my country and my convictions. I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary,” he writes.

Navalny lived by this belief, and died by it.

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The impotent rage of the flailing woke elites Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on November 16th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/11/15/the-impotent-rage-of-the-flailing-woke-elites/

So the Guardian has flounced off of X. With characteristic pomposity it announced this week that it will no longer post its articles on this ‘toxic media platform’. X has become a volcanic mess of noxious opinion since evil Elon Musk took over, say the crybabies of Kings Place. So they’re off, to Bluesky, whatever that is. Quite how X’s users will cope without such fine journalism as ‘My toddler is vegan. What’s the problem?’ and ‘What if the mega-rich just want rocket ships to escape the Earth they destroy?’ remains to be seen.

The Guardian charges Musk with letting X be overrun with ‘disturbing content’. This once nice joint now simmers with ‘far-right conspiracy theories and racism’, it says. Let’s leave to one side the industrial-strength gall it must require for a media group that wanged on for years about how Brexit was the handiwork of a ‘shadowy global operation’ spending oodles of ‘dark money’ to accuse anyone else of being a conspiratorial crackpot. The more striking thing is the Guardian’s fantastically haughty refusal to hang out anywhere there are people who have a different opinion.

Let’s be real: that’s what this hissy fit is about, this exodus of the entitled, this fleeing of the self-important from X. They just can’t abide being around people who like Trump and don’t like mass immigration and think lesbians don’t have cocks. Musk’s true crime, in their eyes, was to open X up to views that lie outside the fiercely policed parameters of correct think. Their ‘X-odus’ is an oik-avoidance strategy, a retreat from the madding crowd of lowly opinion-havers into the safety of the liberal echo chamber where everyone agrees Trump is Hitler, Brexit is ‘Brexshit’ and Eddie Izzard is a woman.

It was summed up in a column in the Guardian about the Guardian’s abandonment of X. (The Guardian’s favourite topic of discussion is itself.) ‘Hell is other people’, the writer cries. ‘Or, more specifically, other people on social media.’ Of late, she says, X has become ‘the digital equivalent of a pub notorious for glassing at chucking-out time’, whereas Bluesky hosts a ‘more measured, less emotive conversation’. The hints of class hatred are delicious. X is depicted as a shady pub in the chavvy bit of town while Bluesky is apparently akin to the hot-desking zone at Soho House. God bless the Guardian, they gave mingling with the masses their best shot but it’s just not for them.

One thing the Guardian really came to hate on X was the dreaded community note, which is when users can collaboratively correct a post they feel is misleading. Guardian posts on Brexit and Net Zero and other matters were often targeted by these organic swarms of sceptics. That’s the ‘glassing’ they feared – the shoving of the glass of public doubt into the face of elite ideology. Just imagine how painful it was for the posh and virtuous of the Guardian to have some sunburned bloke with the England flag in his social-media bio waging a war of community notes against their online blather. The horror!

The least convincing thing in the Guardian’s smug justification for its retreat from X is its cry that Musk is using the platform ‘to shape political discourse’. Now, this is true, of course. Musk is not shy about his conversion to the cause of Trump. He took every opportunity to push Trumpism on X in the run-up to the presidential election. Yet the idea that the Guardian has some classically liberal hatred for billionaires using their swag and clout to shape politics is bullshit. The Guardian was fine with Twitter, as it was then, when a ‘nicer’ breed of Silicon Valley fat cat was using it to big up the Dems, silence pesky feminists and gag anyone judged to be ‘far right’. What really horrifies the Guardian is that its class of anti-populist, post-truth graduate hysterics has lost control of X. It hates Musk not for stomping his political bootprint on X but for erasing its own.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Editor-in-Chief of ‘Scientific American’ Resigns After Anti-Trump Rant By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on November 16th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/15/editor-in-chief-of-scientific-american-resigns-after-anti-trump-rant/

The editor-in-chief of Scientific American has resigned from her position following a vulgar rant against President-elect Donald Trump and his supporters.

As the New York Post reports, Laura Helmuth announced her resignation on Thursday, declaring that she was “going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching).”

As previously reported, Helmuth reacted to the results of the 2024 election in real-time, beginning her deranged rants once it became clear that former President Trump was going to win an historic second, non-consecutive term.

“Every four years I remember why I left Indiana (where I grew up) and remember why I respect the people who stayed and are trying to make it less racist and sexist,” said Helmuth in a series of social media posts.

“Solidarity to everybody whose meanest, dumbest, most bigoted high-school classmates are celebrating early results because f*** them to the moon and back,” she continued. She also declared that “Gen X is so full of f***ing fascists.”

Helmuth wouldn’t issue an apology for her remarks until November 7th, affirming that her insults were “offensive and inappropriate,” while claiming that she would “respect and value people across the political spectrum.” She deleted the posts in question, but they were preserved through screenshots that have since been shared by her critics, including X owner Elon Musk, who agreed with another user who described Helmuth as “a political activist who has taken over a scientific institution.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

President Trump’s Magic Show Begins By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on November 16th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/11/president_trump_s_magic_show_begins.html

If you’ve ever played speed chess, then you can appreciate what President Trump is about to do to “official” Washington.  This won’t be like 2017, when the president did everything he could to work amicably with House and Senate Republicans.  This time, you either get on the “Trump Train” or kindly throw yourself from the back car.  There’s no time to waste, and the president won’t be slowing down for stragglers.  

After his first election, President Trump arrived in D.C. with Republican majorities in Congress, too.  He expected that the people who had promised to repeal Obamacare for seven years would have a legislative package ready for him to sign into law.  He expected that Republicans who had campaigned on securing the border for four decades would be prepared to do what it takes to achieve that goal for the American people.  His expectations were met with the disappointing reality of squishy Republican backbones and Uniparty backstabbing.

While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell informed President Trump which of his potential nominees would get Republican support (McConnell’s wife, for instance, would have no problem winning confirmation), House Speaker Paul Ryan told him that there was just no money to build a border wall (because Ryan had already spent trillions supporting Barack Obama’s policy agenda).  Both Republicans took turns publicly laughing at Trump for arriving in D.C. with the misguided belief that the work of government could be anything other than slow.  McConnell and Ryan wasted most of President Trump’s first year in office bickering about how best to dismantle Obamacare before finally throwing up their hands in feigned exasperation after Senator John McCain saved the Democrats’ costly expansion of government-directed medicine with his final “screw you” vote. 

On the other hand, McConnell and Ryan took the Russia collusion hoax very seriously.  Although Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Brennan, Jim Comey, and numerous other coup-plotters inside the Intelligence Community had created that fantasy as a mechanism for illegally spying on candidate Trump before his election and as a mechanism for overthrowing President Trump after his inauguration, congressional Republicans treated the matter as if it deserved their utmost attention.  McConnell and Ryan both knew that the allegations against Trump were ridiculous, but they eagerly assisted Democrats in their efforts to paint the president as a Russian spy.  Why?  Because holding Trump’s fate in their hands gave them power over his presidency. 

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Possibility of a ‘Golden Age’ in the Middle East by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on November 16th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21117/golden-age-middle-east

Iran launched from its own soil hundreds of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and attack drones at Israel, a country smaller than the state of New Jersey — a demonstration of the regime’s fundamentalist commitment to destroying the Jewish state.

President-elect Donald J. Trump at present seems averse to regime change in Iran. Unfortunately — due to the regime’s commitment to “wipe Israel off the map” and, as stated in its constitution, to export its version of Islam across the world — there does not appear to be the possibility for a real long-term peace in the Middle East without regime change. Anything short of that simply invites the regime to wait Trump out, as well as whoever succeeds him.

Not enough can be said to warn nations of the dangers that can arise from a lack of robust leadership, the perils of underestimating the ambitions of adversarial states, and the paralysis of being unable to confront an adversary for fear of escalation. The adversary, not the leader of Free World, is supposed to fear “escalation.”

The repercussions of allowing Iran… to operate without meaningful deterrence, simply underscores the need for a “Golden Age” — especially a new regime in Iran more aligned with the dreams of so many of its citizens — and not a moment too soon.

Never underestimate the power of an administration’s single term or the harm that policies – whether constructive or poorly-informed — can have on the international stage.

As President Joe Biden’s administration approaches the end of its term, it is hard not to see the global volatility, emboldened adversaries, and fractured alliances.

Those are lessons to be learned about the costs of weakness in leadership and the consequences of strategic missteps in foreign policy.