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ROBERT STACY MCCAIN:
“…For approximately 3 million people, nothing in the Mueller report could exonerate President Trump of “Russian collusion,” obstruction of justice, and various other high crimes and misdemeanors of which they are certain he is guilty. For those 3 million people (a number reflecting the combined average weekday primetime audience of CNN and MSNBC) Trump’s guilt is an indisputable fact, his presidency an ongoing crime against humanity, his 2016 election a fraud. In a nation of 325 million people, of course, 3 million is less than a single percentage point. However, that hard-core audience of obsessive Trump-haters includes every Democrat in Washington and the vast majority of our nation’s journalists, university faculty, and other such members of the intelligentsia. Therefore, their deranged idée fixehas enormous influence, calling into existence a sort of anti-Trump industry that manufactures a constant output of rage-inducing propaganda. The CNN/MSNBC bubble is the cable-TV equivalent of a cult compound, where dissent from their political religion is forbidden. For the past two years, the fanatics have been told every night by Rachel Maddow, Don Lemon, et al. that the final destruction of Trump was at hand — “the walls are closing in!” — and the left-wing faithful awaited their deliverance from the evil man in the White House…”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:
“…For history’s rare multiracial and multiethnic republics, an “e pluribus unum” cohesion is essential. Each particular tribe must owe greater allegiance to the commonwealth than to those who superficially look or worship alike.
Yet over the last 20 years we have deprecated “unity” and championed “diversity.” Americans are being urged by popular culture, universities, schools and government to emphasize their innate differences rather than their common similarities.
Sometimes the strained effort turns comical. Some hyphenate or add accents or foreign pronunciations to their names. Others fabricate phony ethnic pedigrees in hopes of gaining an edge in job-seeking or admissions.
The common theme is to be anything other than just normal Americans for whom race, gender and ethnicity are incidental rather than essential to their character.
But unchecked tribalism historically leads to nihilism…”
Bethany Mandel:
“…It’s not as outlandish as some may think. Just look to how British Jews have handled Jeremy Corbyn, who has brought a once-honorable and philo-Semitic Labour party into league with the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah.
This month, the Jewish Labour Movement passed a no-confidence motion against Corbyn’s leadership. As The Guardian newspaper reported, Labour and Corbyn both “were dealt a blow” when the acting general meeting of the JLM “voted to describe the party as ‘institutionally anti-Semitic.’ ”
Sad to say, but the US Democratic Party is sliding toward a similar fate. Soon, “institutionally anti-Semitic” could serve as an apt description for the Democrats, as well. Consider: Just this week, Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in government, sat down with . . . none other than Corbyn…”
Bob McManus:
“…Is there a classier lady anywhere than Shannon Slutman, widow of FDNY firefighter Christopher Slutman — killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan while serving as a US Marine Corps reservist?
No, there is not.
Meanwhile, is there a bigger dope than Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, the pandering jerk from Greenwich Village who was hard-pressed to find a few bucks to help send Gold Star kids to college — while lavishing millions on scholarships for the offspring of New York’s legion of illegal, um, arrivers?
Alas, probably. . . .
New Yorkers who are old enough, and not named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, understand the exquisite pain that attends a death in service to America.
The FDNY’s 9/11 agony — 343 dead in a flash of rolling fireballs and collapsing skyscrapers — would have been unbearable save for a 136-year tradition of allegiance to duty in the face of lethal peril. All give some, some give all is a hoary catchphrase for most — but a sustaining ethic for others.
Shannon Slutman understands this. How could she not?
Her husband was a firefighter, and he was a Marine — another organization that stares down mortal danger every day, but at a price.
She, too, is a hero — suffering exquisitely in the moment but at the same time thinking of others.
“The girls and I thank you for the outpouring of love and support,” she wrote last week. “My husband was a humble man . . . passionate about his family as well as being a firefighter and a Marine. Above all, Chris was a man of integrity and a gentleman in all he did. In honor of Chris, please . . . do something kind for another.”
Do something kind for another. Wow.
Now the skirling pipes and the muffled drums will be for Chris Slutman, an echo from the weeks and months following 9/11 — and the universally recognizable sound of heroes being laid to rest.
Fast forward to Deborah Glick and her colleagues, caught last week short-changing Gold Star families while sprinkling $27 million in tuition aid on so-called dreamers…”
Nick Short:
“…When the FBI was in contact with Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy who compiled his infamous dossier smearing then candidate Donald J. Trump, was it aware that his employer, Fusion GPS, was allegedly simultaneously working as an unregistered agent for Russian interests? This question among many others have yet to be answered. The following is a short timeline of earlier questions and important revelations from 2017 involving the Russia hoax which exposed the connections between Fusion GPS, the FBI, and the media. Many, if not all, of these remain unanswered to this day…”
“…A Federal Court judge has ruled James Cook University acted unlawfully when it sacked physics professor Peter Ridd after he publicly criticised the institution and one of its star scientists over claims about the global warming impact on the Great Barrier Reef.
Professor Ridd last night welcomed the decision and called on the university’s council, its governing body, to make vice-chancellor Sandra Harding accountable for the legal defeat.
“The university has broken the law. What is the university council going to do about this? The vice-chancellor has brought the university into disrepute,” he said.
In his verdict, judge Salvatore Vasta said the university’s grounds for dismissing Professor Ridd — that he breached the university’s code of conduct — were improper. He found that all 17 findings used by the university to justify the sacking were unlawful. . . .
Judge Vasta also said the university had misunderstood “the whole concept of intellectual freedom”.
“In the search for truth, it is an unfortunate consequence that some people may feel denigrated, offended, hurt or upset,” he said.
A penalty hearing will be set for a later date…”
Conrad Black:
“…My guess is that Biden can still win the nomination, but it will be a pretty unenthused campaign. If he doesn’t make his move fairly soon, Klobuchar may gradually rise as the presentable alternative to sirens of the left. Trump will get an improved trade arrangement with China, the North Korean discussions will at least not have descended back to nuclear saber-rattling, and there may be progress in the Middle East, as the Arabs don’t want the Palestinians muddying the waters while the Turks and Iranians are crowding the Arab powers. Trump will have got enough done with the southern border to satisfy the national concern on that subject, will have a full-employment economy, and will conduct an extremely flamboyant campaign flailing the Democrats with all the Trump-collusion nonsense. Incumbent presidents have been defeated only twice since the Great Depression — Jimmy Carter was not a very effective president, and George H. W. Bush allowed the political charlatan Ross Perot to split his party and take 20 million votes. Trump will have the strongest first term to run on since Reagan, or even Nixon, and they both carried 49 states. Trump won’t do that, but he hasn’t made a seriously unfortunate public utterance for months and looks stronger each week…”
NOTRE DAME: A SIGN FOR OUR TIMES. “What we lost today is one of the great embodiments of Western civilization. It is impossible to overstate what this means. It will take some time to absorb. Notre Dame de Paris is at the heart of France’s identity. All distances in France are measured from kilometre zéro, in front of the cathedral. Though most (but not all!) of the French have turned away from their baptism, Notre Dame is the symbolic heart of the nation. And now, it’s gone, though firefighters may have saved its bones. It took 200 years to build, and now it was made a holocaust in one terrible afternoon. . . . This catastrophe in Paris today is a sign to all of us Christians, and a sign to all people in the West, especially those who despise the civilization that built this great temple to its God on an island in the Seine where religious rites have been celebrated since the days of pagan Rome. It is a sign of what we are losing, and what we will not recover, if we don’t change course now.”
Related: The World Sinks To Ruin.
I don’t believe in signs and portents. But human beings think and feel according to symbols as much as — or more than — ideas. And this was a potent symbol. The question is, what new symbol will we create to take its place?
Related: French billionaire pledges more than $100M to help rebuild Notre Dame cathedral.
Plus: “But because it survived largely intact into the digital era, Notre Dame lives on in the virtual world, too—and that may make its restoration all the more complete. For the last half-decade or so, an architectural historian named Andrew Tallon worked with laser scanners to capture the entirety of the cathedral’s interior and exterior in meticulous 3D point clouds.”
Also: Japan ready to support France in rebuilding Notre Dame Cathedral.
From Glenn Reynolds
