RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/24/slow-motion-suicide-of-the-west/

Some people thought James Burnham’s identification of liberalism with civilization’s suicide was hyperbolic. In light of American institutions’ embrace of anti-Americanism, what would they say now?

I have been thinking a good deal recently about Arnold Toynbee’s much-quoted observation that “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” As an historical proposition, I’d say that it was like the story of the curate’s breakfast egg. “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr. Jones!” “Oh no, my Lord, I assure you!” the curate replied. “Parts of it are excellent!”

And yet we all see the pertinence of Toynbee’s point. While there are, as a matter of historical fact, plenty of civilizations that succumb to invasion, occupation, and subjugation, there are also many that wither from within from a failure of self-confidence, of (for the Bergsonians out there) élan vital, of what your philosophy graduate student likes to call thumos: spirit, gumption, “heart,” manliness. 

The fact that no one can even speak of “manliness” today without looking over his shoulder these days is an index that thumos is on the endangered species list (along, as it happens, with sperm counts in the Western world). Why this should be is a fraught question—something whose answer is “overdetermined” as our Freudian friends like to say. 

One major reason, I submit, is that the dominant ideology of the modern West is an ideology of suicide, what the philosopher James Burnham identified as “liberalism.” 

It goes without saying that when it comes to terms being “overdetermined,” “liberalism” is right up at the top. The word has its root in līber, free, which is why it used to be said that tolerance was a defining characteristic of liberalism. Edmund Burke was a liberal in this sense, as was Matthew Arnold, David Hume, James Madison, and other founding fathers.

But that was a long time ago. Nowadays, “liberalism” is distinguished above all by its illiberalism and intolerance. Thus the ideology of “wokeness” and the prevalence therein of the rhetoric of “microaggressions,” “trigger warnings,” and “safe spaces.” If being offended is grounds for interdicting speech then the goal is not tolerance, comrade, but conformity. And it is a short step from that realization to a bureaucracy whose primary aim is the enforcement of that conformity. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17307/jury-trial-mob-violence

Oliver Wendell Holmes correctly pointed out: due process simply cannot be achieved for any defendant in the presence of hostile crowds ready for violence if a verdict of not guilty is rendered.

The ACLU, if the shoe were on the other foot, would be demanding a new trial — if the defendant were black, and white crowds were demanding a conviction or else. But the ACLU is no longer a neutral civil liberties organization. It has become a partisan claque that espoused due process for “me but not for thee.” Real civil libertarians, who demand due process for all, including guilty police officers, must now take over where the ACLU has left off.

Whether guilty or not, Chauvin must be given a new trial at which the jury is sequestered, as it should have been from the beginning of this one. As an alternate juror candidly acknowledged, she had “mixed feelings” about jury duty, because of concerns about “disappointing” either side and the possibility of “rioting.” There is no reason to believe that the unsequestered jurors who actually decided the fate of Chauvin were oblivious to this concern.

The appellate courts should use this case to establish a clear rule that jurors must always be sequestered in racially charged cases where outsiders are threatening violence in the event of a not guilty or reduced verdict…. In the absence of sequestration, the legitimate protests of the outsiders may well deny the defendant his equally legitimate right to a fair trial. That is unacceptable under the Constitution.

“I very seriously doubt if the petitioner … has had due process of law … because of the trial taking place in the presence of a hostile demonstration and seemingly dangerous crowd, thought by the presiding Judge to be ready for violence unless a verdict of guilty was rendered.”

No, this is not your author complaining about the lack of due process in the trial of Derek Chauvin in 2021. It Is the great Oliver Wendell Holmes describing the trial of Leo Frank, a Jew convicted of murder in 1913 and eventually lynched by a mob that included prominent officials, after the governor commuted Frank’s sentence from death to life imprisonment.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/kamala_once_again_displays_signs_of_a_weird_personality_disorder.html

There’s something off about Kamala Harris. And no, I’m not talking about her hard-left political beliefs, the lies she tells, or her endless reinventing herself for political advancement. In that regard, she’s just another leftist politician. What’s bizarre about Kamala is her inappropriate laughter about things that ought to inspire solemnity.

What makes laughter inappropriate? It’s inappropriate when you’re speaking to a crowd and you’re the only one who laughs. Of course, that can also happen to a bad comedian, but there’s no indication in the clip below that Kamala was trying to tell a joke.

Instead, Kamala is talking about the massive economic disruption thanks to the lockdown that the Democrats hammered into America. In that context, she meant to say that 2 million women had been driven out of the workforce, misspoke by saying “people,” corrected herself by saying “women people,” and then giggled inanely. See for yourself:

That’s a sociopathic response to people’s suffering. But we needn’t do an amateur armchair diagnosis to point to the problems with Kamala’s giggle.

It’s entirely possible that she gave a nervous giggle because she made a mistake. However, that would be equally inappropriate. This is a woman who is literally one heartbeat away from leading what is still (although barely) the most powerful nation in the world. Golda Meir didn’t giggle nervously because she misspoke. Neither did Margaret Thatcher. Insecure little girls giggle; not leaders of men and women.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/dems_are_out_to_destroy_a_chauvin_defense_witnesss_life_and_reputation.html

George Floyd had a lethal dose of fentanyl in his body. His post-mortem blood oxygen level was a robust 98%, despite significant heart disease. He was complaining that he couldn’t breathe long before the police, following a violent struggle, got him to the ground in the Minneapolis-approved position for excited delirium. Accurate, previously unseen footage showed that Officer Chauvin’s knee was on Floyd’s shoulders, not his neck. Oh, and an alternate juror said that she was afraid the mob would go after her for a non-guilty verdict. On these and other facts, the prosecution got a guilty verdict. Armed with it, the Democrats are now working to destroy a former medical who dared to testify in Chauvin’s favor.

Here’s the story according to the Daily Mail:

A former medical examiner who served as a witness in Derek Chauvin‘s murder trial will have 17 years’ worth of his in-custody death reports independently reviewed after he testified that the cop was not responsible for George Floyd‘s death, officials have announced.   

Dr. David Fowler, Maryland’s chief medical examiner from 2002 to 2019, was a key defense witness for Chauvin, who was convicted Tuesday of murder and manslaughter for kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes last May. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/what-the-media-didnt-tell-you-about-the-chauvin-case/

George Floyd should not have died, but the case does not stand as a totem of systemic racism either. Here are the facts.

I f you did not watch the Derek Chauvin trial, but only heard the inflammatory comments spewing out of the White House and the media-Democrat complex, there are things about it you would never know. And you’d be apt to believe the claims that American law enforcement is systemically racist. I watched the trial day in and day out, so let me cut you in on a few basic facts.

Not a shred of evidence was introduced at the trial that Derek Chauvin is a racist. None. There was nothing in the weeks of testimony that even hinted at such a thing. The prosecutors who aggressively urged the jury to convict Chauvin of murder never intimated that racism played any role in the crimes. They convincingly argued that he was a bad cop, not a racist cop.

The police did not hunt down George Floyd. They did not randomly happen upon him. They did not make a discriminatory choice to hassle him. Instead, the police responded to a citizen complaint from a local market, Cup Foods, based on a report by a young black cashier that Floyd had passed him a patently counterfeit $20 bill.

The young cashier considered not telling his manager about what Floyd had done. But then, under the Cup Foods rules, the $20 would have come out of his own pocket, which wouldn’t have been right.

Still, the police were not called right away. A complaint was lodged only after Cup Foods employees (including the young cashier) pleaded with Floyd, not once but twice, to return to the store and settle the matter. Floyd, who was parked across the street in the company of his suspected drug-dealer companion, was obviously high on drugs and uncooperative — to the extent he was responsive at all — in replying to the employees’ pleas.

Chauvin was a late arriver to the police interaction with Floyd. The first two cops on the scene were rookies: Alex Kueng, a young African-American officer who had joined the Minneapolis Police Department with the aspiration of helping make it more diverse and empathetic, and his partner, Thomas Lane — who, like Chauvin, is white, a fact that had no bearing on the case (i.e., there’s no evidence that Lane is a racist, either).

Floyd did not merely pass a counterfeit $20 bill. He was obviously under the influence of narcotics while seated behind the steering wheel of a Mercedes-Benz SUV. And he was obviously the driver; in the back seat of the SUV was Shawanda Hill, an old friend who testified that Floyd had offered to drive her home.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/04/19/why-illinois-is-in-trouble–122258-public-employees-earned-100000-costing-taxpayers-158-billion-despite-pandemic/?sh=61a9b5b77f

Illinois public employees and retirees with $100,000+ paychecks grew from 109,881 (2019) to an all-time high of 122,258 in 2020 – costing taxpayers $15.8 billion.

Congressional “bailouts” made it possible. The recent $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act provided an additional $13.5 billion to Illinois state and local governments. (Look up your hometown here — $350 billion flowed to states and 30,000 communities.)

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com compiled the list of six-figure earners from Freedom of Information Act requests.

Barbers at State Corrections trimmed off $115,000; janitors at the State Toll Highway Authority cleaned up $123,000; bus drivers in Chicago made $174,000; line workers on the Chicago Transit Authority earned $222,278; community college presidents made $418,677; university doctors earned up to $2 million; and 171 small town managers out-earned the Illinois governor ($181,670).

Our interactive mapping tool allows users to quickly review the 122,258 public employees and retirees across Illinois making more than $100,000 (by ZIP code). Just click a pin and scroll down to see the results in your neighborhood rendered in the chart beneath the map.

Auditing the largest pay and pension systems in Illinois:

Public schools (40,000) – Last year, nearly 24,500 educators earned a six-figure salary while more than 15,500 retirees received six-figure pensions. Most Illinois schools were not back to fulltime, in-person instruction as of March 2021.