BOOKS Comments turned off

Oliver Traldi Who the Woke Are A new book delivers keen insights into the human condition while speaking directly to concrete social phenomena.

Posted By on October 26th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/review-of-we-have-never-been-woke-by-musa-al-gharbi

We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, by Musa al-Gharbi (Princeton, 432 pp., $35)

What is a theory? In philosophy, we usually think of it as a set of propositions. These propositions might be challenged directly, or they might turn out to generate empirical predictions or logical consequences that could be challenged instead. But we can also think of theories as things that live in people’s minds—ideas that shape our vocabularies, our maps of the world, our attunements to perceptions, our instincts about what jumps out as important in our environments. Thinking this way, a theory’s measure is its number of adherents. What ought to be evaluated is how they think when gripped by the theory, not what the theory’s abstract implications might be.

Theories of politics in particular seem apt for this sort of evaluation. Some political philosophies do not specifically entail that horrible things ought to be done. But if such a theory’s adherents always seem to do horrible things once they get power, that should count against the theory.

Musa al-Gharbi’s book We Have Never Been Woke presents an account of the character and causes of woke politics. It fills a gap in this regard: al-Gharbi, primarily a sociologist, gives a different kind of perspective than, say, Yascha Mounk’s relatively centrist history of wokeness as rooted in radical academic ideas or Richard Hanania’s relatively right-wing history of wokeness as rooted in activist jurisprudence and the administrative state. But at a further remove, We Have Never Been Woke is a story of how theories—both the woke theories criticized and the more classically leftist theories used to criticize them—simultaneously open our eyes to some things while blinding us to others.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Can the Department of Education Be Used for Good? By Peter Wood

Posted By on October 26th, 2024

https://tomklingenstein.com/can-the-department-of-education-be-used-for-good/

Can the U.S. Department of Education be put to good use? Forty-six years of experience — it opened its doors in 1980 — have persuaded many Americans that we would be better off without this arm of government. But efforts to amputate it, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s attempt in 1981, have failed. It is a lot easier to persuade Congress to add to the national bureaucracy than to take away an entrenched instrument of state. 

Dislike of ED has many tributaries but one main source: the belief that education is something properly left to students, to families, and to local institutions — not the federal government. ED got much of its initial support from special interest groups representing teachers, and it continues to this day to favor programs that benefit teachers and educational bureaucrats over the needs of the citizenry. 

A concise summary of this indictment can be found in Lindsey Burke’s essay in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. Supporters of Kamala Harris, of course, have excoriated Project 2025 and called out Burke’s essay in particular for calling for the abolition of ED. Donald Trump, moreover, has distanced himself from Project 2025 and never shown interest in uprooting ED.

This leaves open the possibility of attempting to put ED to good use if Trump manages to take back the White House. What might that look like? Can it be done? 

The guiding principle of such an effort must surely be that education serves a real national purpose. As soon as that door is cracked open, all manner of well-meaning (and some not so well-meaning) reformers come crowding in. Some say national purpose is now best defined as “anti-racism,” and ED does its part by advancing the DEI agenda. Others say our national purpose is the pursuit of “social justice,” and ED can advance this by dismantling the system that privileges the American middle class. 

Those are two of ways in which the national purpose of American education is subverted. There are plenty of others, but I want to focus on what I take to be the genuine national purpose of education, and that is to sustain the nation. We need our schools and our schooling (in whatever form it takes) to prepare young people to play positive and meaningful parts as citizens of our self-governing republic. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iranian Missiles Hit Europe: Europe Does Nothing by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on October 26th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21048/iranian-missiles-hit-europe

Iran’s Islamist regime has never made a secret of its ambitions. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who seized power following the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and established the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, said: “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”

Ignoring the warning signs will only make the price Europe pays even higher.

The question is, how much more aggression will Europe tolerate before it recognizes the full extent of the threat?

How come Europeans do not seem as distressed about the deaths of civilians in Ukraine as in Lebanon and Gaza?

All the EU seems to do is issue statements of condemnation against Israel, which is sacrificing the lives of its people to save these sanctimonious ingrates.

The first step should be to formally designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its elite Quds Force as terrorist organizations. This would send a powerful signal that Europe is no longer willing to tolerate Iran’s military and ideological expansion, and it would empower law enforcement across the continent to act decisively against Iranian operatives.

Europe should also take a bold step of shutting down all Iranian embassies and consulates on its soil.

Europe should sever all trade relations with Iran. Every euro that flows into Iran is likely being funneled into Tehran’s military machine and its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The EU also needs to be prepared to form a coalition to back up its words with military action. Continuing to sit passively while Iranian missiles and drones rain down on a European nation is not a strategy; it is a surrender

If Europe finds itself too hesitant to confront the Iranian regime directly, it should at the very least stand by those who are fighting the Iranian regime and its proxies. Israel has taken the lead in confronting Iranian aggression in the Middle East. Rather than undermining Israel for defending itself and the West against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, the EU should do everything it can support these heroes. Abandoning Israel while it fights Iranian-backed terror only weakens Europe and plays into the hands of everyone working to bring it down.

By responding with empty words as Iranian missiles hit European soil, the EU is essentially green-lighting Tehran to escalate its aggression. The lessons of Nazi Germany are there for everyone to see.

The time has come for Europe to support those risking their lives to take down this terror regime before they get a nuclear bomb.

Most grateful of all would be the people of Iran.

The European powers’ current approach to Iran is uncomfortably reminiscent of how, in the 1930s, they dealt with Nazi Germany.

European democracies, choosing appeasement over confrontation, turned a blind eye to Hitler’s rising aggression. This indulgence, not surprisingly, simply emboldened the Nazis, and led to the horrors of World War II.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

LETS’ PLAY “WHO IS THE FASCIST!” ERIC LEVINE

Posted By on October 26th, 2024

During her recent Town Hall on CNN with Anderson Cooper, Vice President Kamala Harris told her audience that she believes Donald Trump is a fascist.  It would have been interesting to hear her response if she was asked to define what the term “fascist” means. 

Clearly, she has no clue.  If she did, she never would have taken the bait and answered the question.  In reality, she and the policies of the Democratic Party have more in common with fascism than MAGA world. 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines fascism as:

A populist political philosophy, movement, or regime… that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition. At the core of fascism is loyalty to tribe, ethnic identity, religion, tradition, or in a word, nation. 

Harris and her fellow Democrats use the terms “fascist” and “patriot” interchangeably to suit their narrative.  Their supporters are “patriots.”  Republicans or Americans who take issue with their policies, are “fascists.”   President Biden highlighted the point when he referred to Republicans and Trump supporters as “semi-fascists.”   Putting aside that the term “semi-fascist” has no knowable definition, the intent of the accusation was clear, accuse Trump and his supporters of being as evil as Hitler.  It was offensive when Biden made the statement.  It is no less offensive now when Harris uses the term so flippantly. 

ISRAEL, NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

Who Leaked U.S. Intelligence on a Possible Israel Attack on Iran? This type of intelligence compromise harms American national security because it discourages U.S. allies from sharing critical threat intelligence with our country. Fred Fleitz

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/25/who-leaked-u-s-intelligence-on-a-possible-israel-attack-on-iran/

Fred Fleitz previously served as National Security Council chief of staff, CIA analyst, and a House Intelligence Committee staff member. This article was cleared for classification purposes by the CIA Classification Prepublication Review Board.

A recent leak of U.S. intelligence analysis on how Israel might retaliate against Iran for a massive missile attack against the Jewish state on October 1 has outraged Biden/Harris administration critics and further damaged U.S.-Israel relations.

Given their opposition to an Israeli attack on Iran, Biden/Harris officials had a strong motive to leak this information. However, the huge number of U.S. government employees who likely had access to this intelligence means there are many other suspects.

The intelligence in question was a one-page classified analysis by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) titled “Israel: Air Force Continues Preparations for Strike on Iran and Conducts a Second Large-Force Employment Exercise, October 15-16, 2024.” This top-secret report was accompanied by a one-page chart that discussed the weaponry Israel might use to attack Iran.

The NGA assessment was made public after it was anonymously posted to a Telegram discussion group popular with Iranians.

Understandably, President Biden and other senior U.S. officials would want to know when Israel will attack Iran, what it will attack, the weapons it will use, and the timing of the attack. Normally, U.S. officials would just ask their Israeli counterparts for this information. However, because of the increasingly poor relationship between the Biden/Harris administration and the Netanyahu government and reported leaks to the press by White House officials of their confidential discussions with Israeli officials, the Israeli government does not trust the Biden/Harris administration. As a result, Israel has refused to share this type of sensitive Israeli national security information with the United States. The Biden/Harris administration, therefore, must rely on the U.S. Intelligence Community for information about Israeli plans to attack Iran.

There has been some speculation that a Biden/Harris administration official leaked the analysis to sabotage a possible Israeli attack on Iran that they fear could influence the November 5 presidential election. There is no evidence so far that any administration official was involved in such a gravely serious leak against Israel.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s Blockade of Taiwan: Irresistible Momentum to War by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21047/china-blockade-of-taiwan

Beijing maintains that the island has been an “inalienable” part of China since time immemorial. The People’s Republic has never exercised control over Taiwan. In fact, no Chinese regime has ever held indisputable sovereignty to it. Chiang Kai-shek, the first Chinese ruler to exercise control of the whole island, arrived in 1949.

A quarantine is a cunning maneuver at a time that China is not prepared for a full-scale war and is not ready to start hostilities by launching an invasion of Taiwan’s main island.

Not prepared? Xi Jinping does not trust the Chinese military, a war on Taiwan would be extremely unpopular with the Chinese people, and the Chinese regime is extremely casualty averse.

Xi, therefore, is trying to intimidate everyone else into submission.

“The real target is the United States.” … They were “practicing ways to ambush the U.S. Navy if it heads towards an already held-hostage Taiwan.” — Chang Ching of the R.O.C. Society for Strategic Studies.

Xi’s implied threats to use these weapons are particularly ominous. We have to ask ourselves: When in history has a militant regime engaged in belligerent acts and constantly threatened to go to war but did not actually do so?

China on October 22 conducted live-fire exercises in the Taiwan Strait.

The bellicose move follows a 13-hour simulated blockade of Taiwan on October 14 and 15. The People’s Liberation Army, in the Joint Sword-2024B exercises, employed a record 153 planes as well 26 ships, including the Liaoning, one of the country’s three aircraft carriers.

The Chinese Coast Guard participated in the massive drill as well, carrying out, as the Economist noted, an “unprecedented” patrol around the main Taiwan island.

The drill, according to the Chinese Coast Guard, was a “practical action to control Taiwan island in accordance with the law based on the one-China principle.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Two Lawsuits Challenge Swampbuster and the Regulatory Labyrinth of the Administrative State By Janet Levy

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/two_lawsuits_challenge_swampbuster_and_the_regulatory_labyrinth_of_the_administrative_state.html

Dwight Waldo, whose 1948 book The Administrative State gave the eponymous term widespread usage, believed that public administration is rational action designed to maximize public goals.

Unfortunately, the administrative state and its bureaucrats no longer have the public on their minds.

Without any constitutional authority, the administrative state frames, enforces, and adjudicates the regulations of a plethora of alphabet agencies. Unelected bureaucrats, politicized by monied NGOs and lobbyists, exercise powers of all three branches of government, disregarding the separation of powers and the checks-and-balances provisions of the Constitution.

Such is the viselike hold of the administrative state that Chief Justice John Roberts, dissenting in a 2013 judgment on a regulatory scheme of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), wrote: “The administrative state ‘wields vast power and touches almost every aspect of daily life….’ The Framers could hardly have envisioned today’s ‘vast and varied federal bureaucracy’ and the authority administrative agencies now hold over our economic, social, and political activities.”

An example of the arbitrary power the administrative state wields are some of the rules agencies have framed for the Swampbuster provisions, passed by Congress in 1985, under which the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) can deny benefits to farmers who do not voluntarily give up farming on wetlands. And who designates wetlands? It is the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a federal agency of the USDA. Using Swampbuster, the USDA has come to regulate property it would otherwise not have been able to.

However, four recent Supreme Court decisions have reined in the administrative state. The court swept aside decades-old precedents to shift the balance of power from the agencies to the courts. The Swampbuster provisions and NRCS-framed rules, too – seen by many legal experts as violative of property rights and overly broad in implementation – have been challenged in two recent lawsuits. Though the courts have yet to decide on the Swampbuster lawsuits, the four Supreme Court decisions will likely have a strong bearing on the cases.

Here, in brief, are the salient points of the four rulings:

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

It’s Still the Economy, Stupid Globalists! By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/it_s_still_the_economy_stupid_globalists.html

A paradigm shift occurs when there is a radical change in thinking from an accepted point of view to a new one.  Changes in social consciousness are not easy.  Institutions defend orthodoxy with all their assorted powers, while new ideas receive support only from iconoclasts who are often dismissed as kooks or disparaged as domestic enemies.  

Prevailing opinion is like a heavy boulder sitting in the valley between several steep hills.  For a novel idea to succeed, its proponents must push that boulder up the slope until it reaches the top of a neighboring peak.  Two observations follow from this analogy: (1) when moving the heavy boulder of conventional wisdom in a new direction, the gravity of traditional consensus works to roll it right back into the valley where it originally rested, and (2) once the boulder is finally pushed up a hill with the force of sufficient evidence and popular support, it will quickly roll down the other side and rest in a new valley of conventional wisdom.  Changing human minds, in other words, is a punishing exercise until you reach a tipping point, when social change occurs rapidly.

We are right now in the midst of one of these phenomenal paradigm shifts.  Americans are “awakening” to the idea that the federal government does not have their best interests at heart.  They are pushing back against mass illegal immigration.  They are resisting government surveillance and censorship.  They are questioning economic regulations that have weakened private property rights while giving a small number of corporations and financial elites almost total control over commerce, the food supply, and the monetary system.  

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Hamas Loyalist Professor: Russell Rickford at the Cornell University “[October 7th] was exhilarating! It was exhilarating! It was energizing.” by Sara Dogan

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/hamas-loyalist-professor-russell-rickford-at-the-cornell-university/

#3: Russell Rickford, Cornell University

Cornell associate professor of history Russell Rickford made national headlines for his enthusiastic and boisterous approbation of Hamas’s barbaric October 7th massacre of Israeli civilians during which over 1200 were maimed, mutilated, and slaughtered, and hundreds more taken hostage.

At a rally hosted by the ironically-named group, Jewish Voice for Peace, in Ithaca, New York on October 15, 2023, barely a week after Hamas’s attack, Rickford lauded Hamas in the highest terms and celebrated the outright slaughter of Israel’s Jews.
“What has Hamas done?,” Rickford asked. “Hamas has shifted the balance of power. Hamas has punctured the illusion of [Israeli] invincibility. That’s what they’ve done…Hamas has changed the terms of debate.”
Rickford continued extolling the virtues of the terrorist group, saying that “Hamas has challenged the monopoly of violence” and that the Palestinians “were able to breathe for the first time in years” thanks to the bloody October 7th massacre.

“[I]t was exhilarating! It was exhilarating! It was energizing! And if they [Palestinians] weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, by this shifting of the balance of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated!” Rickford concluded, expressing sheer joy at the extent of Hamas’s slaughter.

Even in the highly anti-Semitic world of higher education, Rickford’s remarks praising the massacre were considered a step too far. The professor requested and was granted a leave of absence from the university but remained an employee and is still listed as a professor on the university’s website.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Kamala Loses One-Person CNN Debate Even the state media can’t cover for her anymore. by Mark Tapson

Posted By on October 25th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/kamala-loses-one-person-cnn-debate/

As we enter the final stretch of election season, every day seems to bring another Trump/Vance victory in spite of a hostile media, and another embarrassing loss by the Harris/Walz campaign. Recently, for example, Trump endeared himself to regular Americans by putting on an apron and working the McDonald’s drive-thru; conversely, McDonald’s dealt a fatal blow to Kamala’s claim she had worked for them as a teenager by releasing a statement declaring they could find no evidence of that. She is looking more and more like the most hapless, brainless, inauthentic, unqualified presidential nominee in modern history, if not ever. Even the state media like CNN can’t cover for her anymore, as evidenced by the tepid assessments of CNN commentators in the wake of Kamala’s recent CNN town hall hosted by Anderson Cooper.

To recap: when the Democrats realized that Joe Biden could no longer be propped up as their 2024 candidate, they found themselves painted into a corner. The Democrat kingmakers – Barack Obama, Susan Rice, and Valerie Jarrett – needed to step in and depose the decrepit Biden but didn’t want to fall back on Vice President Harris, whom they knew was devoid of accomplishments, likeability, brains, and presidential charisma, but how could they not go with her? Running the vice president as the nominee would ordinarily be the obvious move; leap-frogging over Kamala and selecting someone else would be a clear acknowledgement that she had never been anything but a diversity hire. And how could the party of identity politics not go with a “woman of color”? It would discredit their entire ideology.

So they rolled the dice and installed Kamala, knowing she was not ready for prime time but counting on a supportive media and a strategy of painting Trump as Hitler 2.0 to get her over the finish line. But in the ensuing months she has not only not risen to the occasion, she and her campaign are flailing to such an extent that all they have left is to fear-monger hysterically about Trump as A Threat to Democracy™.

Then came CNN’s Wednesday evening town hall in Philadelphia. David Urban nailed it when he declared afterward that she lost a one-person debate. A couple of examples of her prevaricating and fumbling will suffice to give a sense of just how badly the event went for her.

When Cooper hit her with a question she should have seen coming from a mile away – is Trump’s idea of a border wall actually “stupid,” as she had initially called it? – she panicked immediately and rambled about Trump until Cooper interjected to get her back on track. As an open borders enthusiast who plans to give citizenship to millions of illegals in the country, she had the nerve to say that there needs to be a legal process for immigration and that she will secure the border. Cooper flustered her further by pressing: “So you don’t think the idea of a border wall is stupid anymore?” and she responded again by attacking Trump and complaining that “he didn’t do much of anything” with the wall.