Tuesday roundup

Alan Dershowitz piece at The Hill entitled "Time To Tell the Truth About the Palestinian Issue." It's a refutation of a New York Times Sunday Review column entitled "Time To Break the Silence About Palerstine."

There is no silence to break. What must be broken is the double standard of those who elevate the Palestinian claims over those of the Kurds, the Syrians, the Iranians, the Chechens, the Tibetans, the Ukrainians, and many other more deserving groups who truly suffer from the silence of the academia, the media, and the iternational community. The United Nations devotes more of its time, money, and votes to the Palestinian issue than to the claims of all of these other oppressed groups combined.

The suffering of Palestinians, which does not compare to the suffering of many other groups, has been largely inflicted by themselves. They could have had a state, with no occupation, if they had accepted the Peale Commission Report of 1938, the United Nations Partition of 1947, the Camp David Summit deal of 2000, or the Ehud Olmert offer of 2008. They rejected all these offers, responding with violence and terrorism, because doing so would have required them to accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, something they are unwilling to do even today.

Not just a state, but a vibrant, robust one:

Had the early Palestinian leadership, with the surrounding Arab states, not attacked Israel the moment it declared statehood, it would have a viable state with no refugees. Had Hamas used the resources it received when Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005 to build schools and hospitals instead of using these resources to construct rocket launchers and terror tunnels, it could have become a “Singapore on the Sea” instead of the poverty stricken enclave the Palestinian leadership turned it into.

He dismantles a number of egregious assertions she makes about how Palestinians inside Israel live. A definite red-the-whole-thing piece.

Speaking of refutations, Maria Bartiromo obliterates AOC's 70-percent taxation idea:

Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo, however, isn’t convinced or amused by Ocasio-Cortez’s complete lack of common sense and her economic naivete. Appearing on ox News on Tuesday from the World Economic Forum, Bartiromo began ripping apart Ocasio-Cortez’s frail economic plan like a wolf on a deer carcass.

“What is that going to do to the economy if you make it so economically difficult for the highest earners?” Bartiromo said. “Let me just point out that according to Tax Foundation, the top 10 percent of earners already pay almost 80 percent of all taxes.”

Bartiromoro said it all reminds her of something New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio said recently about all the wealth being in the wrong hands, to which the Fox Business host proceeded to tear apart the idea that the rich are somehow horrific, greedy people who use their money only for evil as people like Ocasio-Cortez like to insinuate.

“What exactly is the wrong hands?” Bartiromo said. “Is the wrong hands Ken Langone — the billionaire that gave $100 billion NYU medical school so that NYU could give out free medical school educations? Or maybe it it’s in Steve Schwarzman‘s hands — who just gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the New York Public Library, so that people can have access to new technology in the library? Or maybe it’s someone like David Koch, or someone who has given so much to medical schools?”

Bartiromo wondered allowed about what would happen to all of this charitable giving by the rich should all of their taxes be raised to such absurd levels.

“You have to wonder what those billionaires would do with their money if the first thing they have to do is give 70 percent of it to the government,” Bartiromo said. “And let’s talk about productivity for a second — a whole ‘nother conversation. Are you going to work incredibly hard with the belief that you can earn great success, and you can get better and more wealth? Are you going to work really hard if you know that, at a point, you’ll have to give it all to the government? I don’t think so. So those comments, to me, seem quite naive.” 

The Supreme Court does the right thing. Our military is no place for experimenting with putting mentally ill people in stressful situations on which our national security hinges:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to go ahead with its plan to restrict military service by transgender people while court challenges continue.
The high court split 5-4 in allowing the plan to take effect, with the court’s five conservatives greenlighting it and its four liberal members saying they would not have.

Have you stopped to wonder who would be filling Brett Kavanaugh's  old position? Hopefully, this lady:

If you are uninitiated about Neomi Rao, chances are you’ll get to hear her name quite often very soon. Rao, the Republican pick to replace the old seat of judge––now Justice––Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is suddenly under scrutiny by “liberal advocacy groups” for her college writings.

The Freedom-Haters' specific gripes?

So, what are Rao’s “appalling views”? USA Today cites some of them. Rao, a fine judicial mind even in her early years, seems to be quite poised and evenhanded for a college kid. She advocates for a single national identity instead of hyphenated Americans, because that is the only way to build up real solidarity, through healthy civic nationalism instead of individualism and appealing to tribal identity.

Rao wrote: “multiculturalists…separate and classify everyone according to race, gender and sexual orientation. Those who reject their assigned categories are called names: So-called conforming blacks are called ‘oreos’ by members of their own community, conservatives become ‘fascists.’ Preaching tolerance, multiculturalists seldom practice it…”

Her strongest words were against egalitarianism, and on advocating prudence. On charges of sexual assault, she wrote: “Unless someone made her drinks undetectably strong or forced them down her throat, a woman, like a man, decides when and how much to drink. And if she drinks to the point where she can no longer choose, well, getting to that point was part of her choice…implying that a drunk woman has no control of her actions, but that a drunk man does strips women of all moral responsibility.” 

Quoting Camille Paglia, Rao wrote something considered poison in the current climate, that there is currently a “dangerous feminist idealism which teaches women that they are equal. Women believe falsely that they should be able to go anywhere with anyone.” Needless to say, the reactions to these have been swift from liberal publications, which are increasingly indistinguishable from activism blogs.

Sociologist and public intellectual Nathan Glazer passed away recently at the age of 95. Here is an essay he wrote for Commentary in 1976 about how the United States is the only country that has tied its national values to its foreign policy.

 In England, France, Germany, Japan, or India, only the Right speaks of national values and insists that they be made significant in the shaping of policy. In America, however, liberals as well as conservatives are given to asserting that national values should affect foreign policy. I think there is one important reason for this: in the United States when we speak of national values, there is no implication of a primordial past, lost to memory, no suggestion that our values arise from race, blood, and soil. To speak of American values is to speak—still, and for most people—of founding documents—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers—known to all, clearly available, existing in the full light of history, and propounding what have by now become universal values, whether or not they are realized in practice. 

 To really become an American is to embrace those principles. It's why this country stands as a symbol to so many around the world in a way that other countries do not.