Not what they were known for. The post “Too wimpy”: the Aerosmith song that the band initially hated first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

The recent Benedictine College commencement speech delivered by Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, an outspoken Catholic, has stirred much controversy over the past week — in no small part due to consistent, willful misinterpretations and even misquotes of the football star’s rousing exhortation extolling the virtues of both motherhood and fatherhood. One particular (and unsurprising) target of feminists’ ire has been Butker’s devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). One such feminist was Sara Haines, a professional chatterbox on The View. Catholic truth…. is oppressive, in the same way that a railing on a high balcony is oppressive to those who wish to leap to their deaths. In her diatribe, Haines alleged that Butker is “not just a devout Catholic.” She continued, “This is someone who’s practicing something called the Traditional Latin Mass, which is divergent from the majority of Catholics. It’s compared to being cult-like and extremist, like some religions in the Middle East and Asia. So this is a very extreme religion.” (READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: The Bogeyman: The Leftists’ Hatred of the Catholic Church) The first claim proffered by Haines, that the TLM is “divergent from the majority of Catholics,” is demonstrably weak, so she isn’t starting out well. What is today referred to often as the TLM (but also called the Tridentine Mass or the Extraordinary Form of the Mass) is simply the Mass that Catholics have been celebrating for over a century. The earliest references to this particular form of the Mass are found in the writings of the late sixth-century Pope St. Gregory the Great. Nearly a thousand years later at the Council of Trent, Pope St. Pius V formalized and standardized the Roman rite of the Mass. The name “Tridentine” is derived from the Council of Trent. This form of the Mass was the most commonly celebrated liturgy right up until the 1970s, when Pope St. Paul VI introduced the Novus Ordo Mass. In the 1960s, the English Catholic author Evelyn Waugh wrote in defense of the TLM: This was the Mass for whose restoration the Elizabethan martyrs had gone to the scaffold. Saint Augustine, St. Thomas à Becket, St. Thomas More, Challoner and Newman would have been perfectly at their ease among us; were, in fact, present there with us…. Their presence would not have been more palpable had we been making the responses aloud in the modern fashion. In short, over a thousand years’ worth of Catholics attended and celebrated the TLM. Martyrs died for that Mass. They are just as much a part of the Catholic Church (in Catholic theology, they are called the Church Triumphant) as those now sojourning across the face of the earth (called the Church Militant). Haines later insisted that only “a small, small percentage” of Catholics attend the TLM, but the ranks of Heaven insist otherwise. Haines then levels further allegations against Catholics devoted to the ancient form of the liturgy: cultishness and extremism. As far as extremism is concerned, the professional chatterbox is correct in declaring Catholicism “a very extreme religion.” The life and death of Christ Himself is evidence of this, compounded by the lives of countless saints and deaths of countless martyrs. Catholicism is not a hobby, it is not a field of study, it is an all-encompassing, all-consuming sacrifice. As the Catholic Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor put it, “What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.” As for the allegation of being “cult-like,” this also just may be true, but it would be no truer of Catholics or TLM attendees than of anyone else. In a way, everyone is in a cult and everyone offers worship. In the TLM, worship is offered to God; the faithful present join their minds and souls and bodies to the expiating sacrifice of Christ crucified and offer themselves entirely to God. Other cults worship sex, worship money, worship self. In some, sacrifice consists of morals or principles, family or friends, and sometimes even the lives of innocent children, offered on the altar of abortion. So everyone is in a cult, really, it just happens that Catholicism is the right cult. Not content with trying to demonize the age-old faith held by Butker and countless others, Haines concluded: What bothers me about that, as a Christian, is that when people abuse Christianity, they often not only cherry-pick from the Bible, they misinterpret and lie by omission, by taking out parts that would have explained something a little better. So what I can say to [Butker], as a Christian, is if you’re using this [presumably Christianity] to oppress a people or hold them down, you’re not walking with Jesus. If you are more obsessed with the religious rituals and practices than you are with the word of Jesus, then you’re not walking with Jesus. And if you’re using it for the judgement of others and as a weapon to beat people down, you’re also not walking with Jesus. So I would really encourage [Butker], really encourage him to find the best parts of faith and not diverge into extremist beliefs. What began with stoking fear against something ancient and not at all understood quickly devolved into pernicious accusations of lying, oppressing, obsessing, and weaponizing. Once again, such accusations are nothing new to Catholics. The Catholic Church boldly declares that she alone holds the fullness of Christian truth, and Haines simply serves to remind us that those who reject or depart from truth have little else to guide them. But what we recognize as an inerrant guide, truth, is resented as a restraint by those who reject it. This rejection and resentment of truth is why Catholics were persecuted by the Jews and Romans in the first centuries after Christ’s death and resurrection; it is why we were oppressed by medieval heretics and tortured by medieval Muslims; it is why English priests were hunted down and hanged under the reign of Elizabeth I; it is why French revolutionaries beheaded bishops; it is why communist agitators desecrated the graves of nuns and lined priests up before the firing squad; it is why Hitler and Stalin tossed Catholics into their camps and gulags; and it is why the secular culture of the 21st century treats Catholics with such rabid disdain. (READ MORE: Speak Boldly, Not Softly: Pope Francis and the Absence of Moral Clarity) Of course Haines will deride Catholic truth as “oppressive.” It is oppressive, in the same way that a railing on a high balcony is oppressive to those who wish to leap to their deaths. For his part, Butker seems to have found the “best parts of faith,” and just like those who have gone before him championing the best parts of faith, he is facing the wrath of a world that does not want to be burdened and oppressed by truth. The post The Pernicious Persecution of Traditional Catholics appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

WASHINGTON — When MGM Resorts International fell victim to a cyberattack in September 2023, Nevada’s largest employer responded the way you would want a big corporation to respond. MGM cooperated with the FBI and did not pay ransom to the hackers even as its systems — including slot machines and hotel room keys — went down for days. Alas, the feds did something you wouldn’t want your government to do. The Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into MGM — the victim of the cyberattack — and demanded that MGM, which suffered an estimated $100 million loss from the hack, provide information about the breach. In a saner world, the regulatory agency’s move would be slammed as blaming the victim. In this world, MGM filed a lawsuit against the FTC in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stop the investigation. The FTC can maintain that it is working to protect consumers, whose data was breached during the cyberattack. Except that it appears the agency is not investigating MGM competitors, such as Caesars Entertainment, which was hacked last summer but paid a ransom to prevent system outages and the release of company data. Then there’s the issue of FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan, one of President Joe Biden’s more controversial hires. Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist has called Khan “the avatar of Bidenomics.” In the Washington Examiner last year, Norquist accused Khan of believing “regulators should disregard consumer welfare and sue businesses large and small whenever they wish and for any reason.” It so happens that Khan was checking into an MGM property in Las Vegas when the cyberattack and resulting systems crash occurred. As Bloomberg reported, “When Khan and her staff got to the front of the line, an employee at the desk asked them to write down their credit card information on a piece of paper. As the leader of the federal agency that, among other things, ensures companies protect consumer data wrote down her details, Khan asked the worker: “How exactly was MGM managing the data security around this situation?” Later, the FTC put MGM under its microscope. It’s personal, the lawsuit argues, and Khan should recuse herself from the probe. As evidence that Khan is personally invested in the outcome, MGM’s lawyers note that Khan participated in the FTC’s decision to not disqualify her. That’s not what you do when you want the public to believe you have no interest in an investigation. MGM’s lawsuit against the FTC argues that MGM is not a “financial institution” and hence doesn’t fall under the FTC’s bailiwick. The lawsuit also contends the agency violated the company’s Fifth Amendment right to due process. I reached out to the FTC press office with questions. What prompted the investigation? Has the FTC ever investigated this type of business in the past? What is the status of the probe? The FTC responded, “We have no comment.” I reached out to Nevada Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen and Rep. Dina Titus for their take on this. Titus was the only Democrat among the three to respond by my deadline. Here is her statement: “Since the cyberattack on MGM last fall, I have been focused on ensuring that federal agencies and companies work together to protect consumer and employee data and prevent future cyberattacks.” She has been in contact with the FTC, Titus added, which she asked to keep her informed. I have a comment: MGM worked with the FBI and refused to give in to the extortionate practices of the dark web. But after irritating Khan, the FTC put MGM under investigation. It’s just wrong.   READ MORE from Debra J. Saunders: Marjorie Taylor Greene Went After GOP Speaker. Guess Who Lost? Federal Spending: Where Are D.C.’s Fiscal Watchdogs? Protest Much? An Academic Reckoning Is Overdue. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM   The post MGM Fights Dark Web … and Federal Bureaucracy appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Let’s cut to the chase: The DOJ/FBI response to the events of January 6, 2021, represents the single greatest mass injustice against American citizens since Japanese internment. As I suggest in my new book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, if the GOP does nut run towards this issue, they’re fools. To date, the GOP has been AWOL in the fight against this massive injustice. What makes the government’s perverse overreaction easy to substantiate is that the Biden Department of Justice is still bragging about the body count: more than 1,424 defendants have been charged, 1,334 with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building, 355 with obstructing an official proceeding, 510 with assault, 133 with using a deadly or dangerous weapon, 57 with conspiracy. More than 500 protestors have been incarcerated. Some are still in the DC gulag awaiting trial. (READ MORE from Jack Cashill: Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cops)  Given that Donald Trump netted only 5 percent of the DC vote in 2020, and that all change of venue requests were denied, the DOJ has a near perfect record in securing convictions in court or punitive plea deals. They brag about that too. They shouldn’t. The Scottsboro Boys had a better chance of finding an unbiased jury in Jim Crow Alabama than the J6ers do in today’s Washington DC. The Scottsboro Boys at least had the ACLU on their side. No such luck for the J6ers. On the first anniversary, all fifty-one ACLU chapters signed on to the kind of letter the ACLU chapter of ancient Rome might have written about the Vandals or the Visigoths.  The ACLU propagandists wrote: “On January 6 of last year, the residents of D.C. were traumatized as an insurrectionist mob roamed our streets, harassed our neighbors, and violently broke into the Capitol Building, killing at least five people — all in an attempt to overthrow the counting of American citizens’ votes.”  The only thing the ACLU got right in this letter was the date. Of course, the J6ers killed no one. All the killing was done by the police, all the lying done by the Left. With the ACLU cheering the oppressors and the GOP cowed into silence, Biden’s DOJ was free to inflict an unprecedented reign of terror on American citizens. The case of Lisa Eisenhart and her son Eric Munchel is a testament to that terror. The DOJ knew precisely what the pair did not do. The reason is simple. Munchel wore an iPhone on his tactical vest and recorded non-stop the pair’s patient 40-minute queue into the Capitol and their 11 minutes within.  Eisenhart wore a tactical vest as well. Wearing such vests was not illegal nor irrational. After a self-organized, self-declared “Million MAGA March” in Washington on November 14, 2020, leftist agitators openly attacked stragglers as they were walking to their hotels, knocking one man unconscious. Eisenhart and her son feared more of the same. Munchel started recording shortly before 2 p.m. The mood outside was largely festive, the air punctuated with frequent chants of “USA, USA.” As the pair entered the Capitol through an open door at 2:37 p.m., several police stood passively along the corridor. The court later acknowledged that Eisenhart “was not a member of any suspect group, did not do any advance planning, nor did she use force to enter the Capitol on January 6.” (READ MORE: After Three Days of Deliberation, Jan. 6 Jury Convicts Great-Grandmother Rebecca Lavrenz) With Eisenhart in the lead, the two mounted the stairway to the Rotunda. The protestors milling about inside seemed excited to be there and, like Eisenhart and Munchel, confused about what to do next. As they wandered, Eisenhart grabbed a pile of zip ties sitting exposed on the side of a corridor. She claims she did not want them falling into the wrong hands. The behavior of her and her son makes the claim credible. For a few minutes, the pair followed a group of rowdy young men whom Munchel repeatedly cautioned, “Don’t vandalize anything, we aren’t Antifa,” and then, more forcefully, “You break shit. I break you.” The viewer sees what Eisenhart saw, and that was a total absence of violence and vandalism. What the pair did not see or hear was the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt, which took place while they were in the vast building.  Looking for an exit, Eisenhart and her son found their way to the gallery of the Senate chamber. There was little police presence in the chamber and none in the gallery. A photographer made Munchel infamous when he took a picture of him holding the zip ties. This photo earned him the media designation “zip-tie guy” and went viral quickly. On the following morning, he was contacted by the London Times.  Unaware of any possible consequences, Eisenhart did the interview. “If they’re going to take every legitimate means from us, and we can’t even express ourselves on the internet, we won’t even be able to speak freely, what is America for?” said Lisa defiantly. “I’d rather die as a 57-year-old woman than live under oppression.” The DOJ took issue with this quote and included it in its charging document. Implied was that her stirring defense of free speech was seditious. Just two years earlier in that same Senate gallery, screaming women repeatedly interrupted an “official proceeding,” the Senate vote to confirm Bret Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. More than once, Vice President Pence had to stop the vote and call for order. Hundreds would be arrested during the DC protests, but no big deal. As NPR reported, “Most of those charged this week with disorderly conduct, crowding or obstructing paid fines of $35 or $50.” Eisenhart and Munchel did not get off so easy. On the morning of January 8, a swarm of FBI agents descended on Munchel’s home. His brother answered the door, only to be clapped in handcuffs while still in his underwear. At the time, the FBI did not know that Eisenhart was at the Capitol. It was she who would volunteer that information. Munchel was booked on January 9, Eisenhart on January 12, both at the federal courthouse in Nashville. “I was floored when I read my charges,” said Eisenhart. Having accused her of trying to overthrow the government, the feds deemed the 57-year-old nurse worthy of pre-trial detention. For the next eleven weeks, Lisa was shuttled among jails in Tennessee, Kentucky, and DC. Like other J6ers, Eisenhart was kept in maximum security. She spent those final six weeks in the notorious DC gulag — “hungry, tired, and lonely.” For clothing, the jailers gave her the equivalent of hospital scrubs. For warmth, they gave her a single thin blanket in a unit so cold in the morning she could see her breath. Before showers, they chained her hand and foot. Unable to sleep at night or eat food always served cold, Eisenhart lost 35 pounds and a goodly chunk of hair.  If Eisenhart had followed the case of attorney Urooj Rahman, she would have had some reason to be hopeful about her sentencing. During the George Floyd riots in May 2020, Rahman threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of an empty NYPD patrol car, setting it on fire. She was arrested and spent a few days in jail before being released to home confinement. In November 2022, Federal judge Brian Cogan sentenced Rahman to 15 months in prison. “You are a remarkable person who did a terrible thing on one night,” Cogan told her. Praising her lifetime of work as a social justice warrior, he explained that hers was one of the most difficult sentences he ever had to impose. Unfortunately for Eisenhart and Munchel, Rahman’s sentencing had no predictive value. At a stipulated bench trial in April 2023, both were convicted on the felony charges of conspiracy to commit obstruction and obstruction of an official proceeding. Munchel was sentenced to 57 months in prison, Eisenhart to 30 months. (READ MORE: George Floyd Revisited: Derek Chauvin Was Wrongfully Convicted) The New York Times summarized their offense as follows, “A Tennessee man and his mother were sentenced to prison on Friday for seeking to intimidate lawmakers by marching with matching tactical vests and carrying zip tie-style handcuffs.” That’s about it. Eisenhart got twice what Urooj Rahman got for firebombing a police car. Munchel got nearly twice that. Like hundreds of other January 6 defendants, Eisenhart and her son were charged with a felony for obstructing an official proceeding, a law spun out of the Enron debacle and creatively adapted to imprison J6ers. The Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of that adaptation before the end of June. In the interim, Eisenhart waits in Limbo. Munchel waits in prison. To date, the GOP has been AWOL in the fight against this massive injustice. The Supreme Court ruling will force them to the front lines. The only way they can win this battle is to take the offensive. They’ve got the ammunition. They just need the will to use it. Some of this material has been adapted from Jack Cashill’s new book, ASHLI: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, now available for purchase. The post Why Republicans Should Make January 6 Their Issue appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

America is a country of immigrants. In 2021, I co-led a grassroots team that rescued almost 400 endangered women from Afghanistan; some went to Europe, some came here. Over the years, I have submitted affidavits for at least ten Muslim women in flight from being honor killed and in search of political asylum. Their legal team interviewed them. I also did and found their testimonies entirely credible. The problem with Islam is not about race but about culture, about tribal and religious customs overruling Western customs. Call me a racist or an Islamophobe, (and many have), and you’d only be exposing your own considerable ignorance.  The hot button issue of immigration is not about race or racism. The two issues are unfairly linked. Unproven allegations of “racism,” (when immigration is discussed), can wreck someone’s reputation and lead to their being defamed, ostracized, silenced, fired, and sued. (READ MORE from Phyllis Chesler: Snowflake Work Habits) For example, last month, in North Carolina, sixteen-year-old Christian McGhee was suspended from high school after he asked his English teacher to define whether the word “alien” referred to “space aliens or illegal aliens who need greencards [sic].” Another student joked that he was “going to kick Christian’s ass” for what he said. No action was taken against this student. The suspension forced Christian to miss an important track event. On May 5th, lawyers filed a suit against the Davidson County School District on Christian’s behalf. Immigration is about Islamism, about idiotically welcoming cultures that fiercely oppose human rights, women’s rights, democracy, fact-based truth, tolerance of difference, respect for intellectual diversity; cultures that practice female genital mutilation (FGM), honor killing, Jew and infidel hatred, those who wish to live lives apart in accordance with their interpretation of Shari’a law, and who dream of a Caliphate replacing a Western way of life. Not all Muslims are Islamists. Many have come to the West to enjoy our freedoms. Those Muslims whom I know and with whom I work, are the bravest of dissidents and free-thinkers. Many support Israel. Some are ex-Muslims, others have converted to another religion or have become atheists. Some are religious Muslims who seek to reform Islam. They could not hold such views and safely remain in Muslim countries.  Thus, while all Muslims are not terrorists, (how many times must one say this?), all 21st century terrorist attacks in the West and in Israel, have been carried out by Muslims. To repeat: Immigration is not about race. Not all Muslims are persons of color or share the same skin-color. Many are olive-brown-or black-skinned but some are not. The problem with Islam is not about race but about culture, about tribal and religious customs overruling Western customs and laws of the land. Immigration is also about how Islamists who have immigrated legally have chosen to use our laws and our political processes in order to implement Shari’a law and Muslim tribal customs. Immigration is about economics — how many non-violent immigrant “dreamers,” in flight from persecution or in search of an economic future, can America afford to subsidize in terms of housing, food, education, medical and dental care? And for how long? President Biden’s belief that immigrants will take low-paying jobs that will benefit big business totally overlooks the potential job losses for working poor citizens.  Immigration is about the wisdom or suicidal foolishness of opening our borders to unvetted floods of criminal drug lords, human traffickers, Islamic Jihadists — and to those who do not wish to work, learn English, or assimilate into a Judeo-Christian West. Immigration is about certain cultural differences that may be — indeed, that have proven to be — insurmountable. President Trump’s 2018 Executive Order suspended for a period of time, immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, and from any country designated as a state sponsor of terrorism. We may recall that the very day President Biden was sworn in, (January, 2021), he revoked President Trump’s immigration policies. There would be no wall built on our southern border, and immigrants from certain countries in South and Central America (El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal) and from at least four Muslim countries (Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen) were once again welcome.  As we know, America’s cities have been flooded by unvetted “illegal aliens,” (whoops! By undocumented wonderful people), primarily men, some of whom have proven to be criminals who beat up police, murder each other as well as strangers, steal, and who sexually assault children and women both in their lodgings and on the streets. Quo Vadis? Where are we headed? Dare I write about this? Yes, I must. Actually, I have done so many times before. Dare I again suggest arrests, trials, jail sentences, and then deportation for those who’ve committed violent crimes? Yes I must. (READ MORE: Why Are Women in America Cheering for Hamas and Iran?) This is true for drug and human traffickers from Central and South America and for Jihadists from the Middle East and Central Asia. How about those who “merely” practice FGM (forced genital mutilation), force their daughters to veil and to submit to arranged marriages, and who honor kill them if they refuse to go along? What about immigrants who indoctrinate their children into hatred of Jews, Christians, and other infidels and who preach Jihad? Since we believe in a separation of religion and state, what can we do if Jihad is preached in mosques? Or when such indoctrination takes place in public and private schools? Wait a minute. What if those who engage in such practices were born in America? I have no easy answers for us but these are questions that we must wrestle with and resolve before it is too late. The post Immigration of Cultures Hostile to the West Must End appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

He was right in front of me and had a head bigger than Trump’s balls. He moved around a lot, like he had a scorpion crawling up his leg, and when the song was over and we were clapping for the band, he kept dancing, and maybe he’d been doing it since swallowing that pill in he summer of ’67 in Haight-Ashbury. It was like John Belushi in the outtakes of The Blues Brothers. Like Belushi but not funny. He was incredibly annoying and clingy, and he couldn’t quite get the blonde he’d put his arm around and christened in gin several times. Because he drank gin and asked for a lot of flowers in his glass, and I’m not surprised, as we already know that the extremes of cosmic stupidity always end up touching, either because of the urns or because of the concentration of aromatic herbs in the gin and tonic. I took the opportunity to ask the owner if he was insured; not my big head, but the floor, I added, laughing at my own witticism. In the end, I could see it coming, he stepped on my foot. But it wasn’t just some minor thing. It was the stomp of a huge beast that had just escaped from a Lovecraft nightmare. I think my fingernails cracked and my eyeballs swelled. For a moment I considered grabbing the guy by the scruff of the neck and smashing him into the bass player, who wasn’t innocent wearing a Che T-shirt either, or throwing him over the bottles in the pub, which could have triggered an extraordinary pre-railway brawl. But I restrained myself, thinking that nothing would make him more excited than getting a slap in the face. Because there are guys who are born with that talent. And in one of his constant invasions of my space I took the opportunity to empty half a glass down the back of his neck. Not good. A couple of ice cubes fell too. Clin, clin, clin. Come back for another, you big head, I said to myself. And then he turned around, hardly looking like he was going to hug me, and I instantly flashed him a 32-piece smile and two silver sparkles, along with eyes that were as compassionate as they were cynical. In case he wasn’t already moved by my young guinea pig look, I cocked my head to one side and muttered an “I’m sorry” that would make an Islamic State executioner wince. Then she stepped in. The blonde girl started laughing out loud, because some women see reality in a dimension hidden from men, which is that of evil, and she immediately realized that someone was pimping her superman and found it all very funny. And she didn’t miss the chance to press the ice cubes down his back, and he was forced to respond with some rather pitiful caresses and lower the heat, and I hadn’t felt so happy in a long time. The band kept on playing classics and the guy with the galactic head kept on annoying, which is his thing, reaching levels that are hard to take, even for someone who is reasonably in favor of animals living in freedom. And in a treacherous hip sway, to the rhythm of Hombres G -sufre, mamón-, he lost his balance with commendable clumsiness, and came at me like the fiscal policy of the European Union, and I felt a moral obligation to stop him, but it seemed wonderful poetic justice to dodge him like in Matrix, contemplate how he cracked his skull against the ground, and then put his hands to my head, saddened by the blow. I took the opportunity to ask the owner if he was insured; not my big head, but the floor, I added, laughing at my own witticism, with that stubbornness so typical of writers the night after collecting the royalties and spending them on a packet of pipes. Still, I held out my hand, for the blonde was already rolling on the floor with laughter and he seemed more inclined to finish her off than to come to her aid. Standing up, freshly humiliated, she stomped a little on the ground, hoping to find a pothole or a puddle of oil, or some other excuse. Then she cursed a waiter, and turned her head as if looking for the referee to blame, and then I understood that he needed to be a victim, because he was in fact touching his groin with a serious expression as if he had suffered a sudden muscle tear. And then the blonde came back, trailing her circus behind her, to deal him the final blow, looking at him with inconceivable love: “I love you for the fun you are.” And I, chronicler and witness, would bet an arm and a leg that this is the same thing that hyenas say every night to their cats, after entertaining themselves by torturing him thoroughly. And for an instant, I must be getting old, I felt sorry for the big head. READ MORE from Itxu Diaz: The Man Who Waits Beautiful Celebrities Dressed by Mad Geniuses The Globalization of Idiots The post The Fool and the Blonde appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Joseph Nye, the intellectual champion of “soft power” and adviser to Democrat presidents reaching back to Jimmy Carter, is one of those liberals whom Lenin purportedly called “useful idiots”: intelligent, well-meaning intellectuals who always seem to give the benefit of the doubt to their country’s enemies. In his May 6th syndicated column, Nye laments the change in U.S. strategy toward China from “engagement” to “great-power competition,” but claims that cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remains possible in certain areas.  It was the Reagan administration that won Cold War I by reversing the flaccid detente policies …  Jimmy Carter. Nye reports that he recently visited China as the chair of a “Sino-American ‘track two dialogue,’ where citizens who are in communication with their respective governments can meet and speak for themselves,” as if the Chinese participants in this dialogue from the Central Party School in Beijing are anything other than hardcore communists towing the CCP line. The Chinese group, apparently, knows what issues to bring to the forefront to tickle liberal hearts: climate change, global public health, arms control, artificial intelligence, free trade (meaning no economic decoupling), and people-to-people contacts. (READ MORE from Frances P. Sempa: Defeating China’s ‘Great Game’ in Cold War II) We need, Nye writes, to “restore a sense of mutual understanding” between the U.S. and China. On climate change, Nye’s group urged its CCP Party School counterparts to urge their government — the world’s biggest polluter and carbon producer — to more rapidly add renewable sources of energy to its numerous coal-fired plants. On global public health, Nye writes, “both governments handled COVID-19 badly,” and we shouldn’t “argue over whom to blame,” despite China’s obvious culpability for the Wuhan lab leak and its cover-up which killed millions throughout the world. On arms control, Nye acknowledges that China’s goal is to reach parity with the U.S. and Russia, but welcomes discussions of “strategic stability” and “non-proliferation.” Perhaps Nye should recall what Jimmy Carter’s Defense Secretary Harold Brown said about arms control with the Soviet Union: We build, they build; we stop, they build. Does he really believe China will stop at nuclear parity? On artificial intelligence, Nye claims that both sides share an interest in “human control” of military weapons. On economics, Nye agrees with his CCP counterparts that economic decoupling “would be bad for both sides.” On people-to-people contacts, Nye wants to stop the “hassling” of academics and scientists by immigration officials on “both sides.”  Nye, like many of the national security bureaucrats that populated the Carter administration, sees some form of detente as the only way to avoid great power war with our principal communist enemy. Nye, like many of those same bureaucrats who served in the Clinton administration, believes that engagement and trade between adversaries will help prevent war. Nye, like many of the Obama administration policymakers, believed that China could be persuaded to join a U.S.-led liberal world order. Nye, like the Biden administration’s national security team, refuses to acknowledge that we are in an existential conflict with China — just as we were with the Soviet Union — and that one side will prevail in that conflict, hopefully without war as in Cold War I.  It was the Reagan administration that won Cold War I by reversing the flaccid detente policies of the first president Nye served, Jimmy Carter. Reagan summarized his strategy in simple terms that do not appeal to liberal intellectuals such as Nye: “We win, they lose.” Ronald Reagan won the Cold War with “hard” power, not “soft” power: a massive military build-up across all domains; an offensive geopolitical strategy to undermine communist control of satellite nations; a rhetorical offensive that highlighted the evils of communism; economic and political warfare. Victory in that Cold War was won by “peace through strength,” not finding areas of cooperation. (READ MORE: The US Has Never Pivoted to the Indo-Pacific) We can all agree with Nye that it is in America’s interest to avoid a kinetic war with China. That war, however, won’t be avoided by “soft power” and exploring areas of cooperation on climate change, public health, arms control, and trade. It won’t be avoided, in other words, by basing policy on Nye’s useful idiocy.      The post Joseph Nye, Useful Idiot appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

“I have a theory, and the theory is mine,” says the pompous twit on the old Monty Python show, “which is to say that it is my theory.” And after he engages in one pointless tautology after another, he delivers himself of his theory about the dinosaurs, which is that they are slender at the head, grow big in the middle, and then taper off again at the tail. [T]he large majority of the protestors at our universities must know that they are pretty ignorant of Israeli and Arab politics. The main difference between his “theory” and most of what I encounter on social media is that he happens to be correct; that’s what bodies of dinosaurs do. But his theory, which he is quite proud of, is like the opinions that we are all encouraged to have and to express, in this way.  It takes no brains, and no careful study of the matter, to come up with it.  A salutary difficulty is lacking.  Difficulty keeps us honest. I have sometimes called it the Principle of the Bad Violinist.  There is no such person, because it is so difficult to play the instrument well enough so that your audience will not bleed from their ears, you must be a very fine player, or you will not play at all.  The principle applies to a wide range of endeavors. (READ MORE from Anthony Esolen: The Classical Education Reformers Have a Chance) The poetry I find in my old editions of The Century Magazine is sometimes excellent; usually interesting; always at least competent. For there was a floor below which the poets could not sink.  That floor was provided by the need for metrical form. Few people can compose a good limerick, let alone a decent and sensible poem in meter and rhyme.  So most people will not make the attempt in the first place, or if they do and it does not succeed metrically, the result will be scouted at once.  But once free verse became the norm, that initial and fundamental difficulty was obviated, and the result has been a flood of bad work. I am not saying that all free verse is bad: far from it.  I am saying that it is a hundred times easier to write bad poetry in free verse than it is to write it in meter and rhyme.  To extend Robert Frost’s metaphor, you get a lot more tennis players if you take away the net. Similarly, you can tell the rate at which an academic discipline can be corrupted by the difficulty involved in engaging in it at all.  Medieval studies, for example, held out for a long time against the simplistic and the politically tendentious, because you actually had to know a lot of things to engage in the enterprise, and some of those things took a long time to learn: languages, most obviously. In the sciences, physics is the last to go, because it is too heavily dependent upon high-level mathematics and the identification and analysis of interacting forces, none of which can be encapsulated in slogans.  It is very hard to be a bad physicist, simply because it is very hard to be any kind of physicist at all. Other disciplines should also be thus protected, but are not, because the standards for engaging in them have been altered.  Take history, for example.  If the historian’s job is to determine what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and how most accurately, fairly, and dispassionately to conceive of it as a moment in the story of a people, then that takes many years of patient and sometimes tedious work.  The good historian must cultivate virtues that are of little use to the politician or the man of action: delayed gratification, humility, a broad survey of many apparently unrelated items, a scrupulous submission to the truth, the capacity to enter imaginatively into the motives of persons far removed from yourself and your own beliefs, and a modest assessment of what we can know for certain, what we can assert with a fair probability, and what must remain but a decent conjecture.  Doubtless, the historian’s human biases will come into play: Edward Gibbon does not well hide his disdain for the ancient Church. Still, Gibbon was a great historian, as was Francis Parkman in his magisterial work on the Indian tribes of North America.  But once you let it be known that political utility is the criterion for judging the historian, or once you say that since no one is ever perfectly objective, the very demand of objectivity may be dismissed, as if one story were as good as another just because they are both stories, then you have cleared away that foundational difficulty, and fools rush in where wise men once walked only with the gravest circumspection. For another example, take the teaching of English literature.  It used to be assumed that English was its own intellectual field, with its principal eras, genres, and authors to be studied.  Let us suppose that you conceive of your task, in the tenth grade, to introduce students to British poetry from its beginnings in Old English to the end of the Victorian era.  It is too much to cover, so of course you will have to let slip many a first-rank poet.  But the difficulty remains, and it is good for you that it does.  How do you teach students how to read a poem by John Donne, when they cannot hear the meter, and when they do not expect the images and the metaphors in a poem to refer to specific things and their specific actions?  How do you teach students how to hear the implicit and often quite subtle ironies in a dramatic monologue by Robert Browning?  How do you show them the difference between what Wordsworth means by Nature and what Pope meant by it?  Please understand, dear Reader, that I know from nearly four decades of experience that most college freshmen will not recognize even the names of the four poets I have mentioned.  No, all these things involve some formidable initial difficulties, and that is why most college English majors now do their best to avoid them, and why our high school students will encounter very little poetry written before 1900.  It is also why English is so often taught as the tail-end of the political dog. (READ MORE: Tocqueville, the Indians, and America’s Natural Bounty) In a democratic republic, or rather among the habits that persist after the soul of the thing itself has died, everyone is encouraged to have and to express political opinions, and the further most of us are from the exigencies of difficult labor (farming, mining, quarrying, lumbering, construction) and of difficult mercantile enterprise (transportation of materials and goods, manufacture, trade, banking), the easier it appears to us to form opinions about anything in the world, and the more gratification we derive from expressing them, if only because everyone else is doing so, and the fight is on. And perhaps a certain psychological factor is also at work.  Somewhere, deep down, buried under the sludge of self-esteem and many years of slovenly schooling, the large majority of the protestors at our universities must know that they are pretty ignorant of Israeli and Arab politics; that they would be hard pressed to name a single figure of importance on either side in 1950 or even 2000; that they cannot describe the land and its features; that they do not know what it is like to be an ordinary Israeli citizen, whether Jew or Christian or Muslim, trying to live an ordinary life.  I am not taking sides in this issue.  I am suggesting, though, that an uneasy conscience, a sense in the gut that you do not know what you are talking about, tends, in a highly charged political atmosphere, to make you shriller, more strident, more obnoxious, quicker to charge your opponents with wickedness or bad faith, and less open to calm and rational discussion.  Again, there is no perceived initial difficulty.  The floodgates are open. Since one shout raises another in opposition, we see that the habits of self-expressed stupidity and impatience breed the same in others, if only because nobody enjoys being yelled at.  The results are there on social media for everyone to see.  Let true schools learn the lesson. The post Self-Expression and Stupidity appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from RoadtoRoota: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

from Sputnik News: Sputnik investigates the role of the media and foreign-backed NGOs in turning up the political temperature in the Central European country. Robert Fico remains under the care of doctors at a hospital in the city of Banská Bystrica after a brazen assassination attempt Wednesday against the Slovak Prime Minister shocked the country […]