The contemptibles are not going to quietly accept yesterday's defeat

         Last September, I wrote a post at Precipice titled "My Personal Struggle With Contempt."  It riffs off of 

an essay at Law & Liberty by John O. McGinnis entitled “Is Civic Decline an Existential Threat?” It really doesn’t cover any ground that hasn’t been covered before. It notes the three main components of our present crisis: decline of education, decline of civic associations, and the transmutation of the religious impulse. McGinnis even shares my inclination toward pessimism about our prospects for any kind of civic restoration.

McGinnis is properly aware of how tough it is to surmount ill will given the array of obsessions the Left has imposed on society as a whole:

As McGinnis points out, climate alarmism, which demands a halt to human advancement regarding such modern blessings as safety, comfort and convenience, is something that we ought not to abide by. He also notes the normalization of the Howard Zinn’s and Nicole Hannah-Jones’s view of America’s essence, and this likewise falls outside the parameters of “just one of many viewpoints we ought to consider in our nation’s classrooms.”

I would add to his enumerations the mainstreaming of historically unprecedented notions of human sexuality, such as the expansion of the definition of marriage to include unions of two people of the same sex, and the legitimization of self-identification with the sex opposite one’s DNA and genitals. Carl Trueman is exactly right in asserting that, of all the bizarre novelties we’re living with, this one takes us into realms devoid of reference points. In combination with artificial intelligence, it has the capacity to completely untether us from assumptions we as members of the species Homo sapiens have held since our arrival among the planet’s life forms.

And then there is the septic infection on the Right:

Conversely, the fact that well over half of those who identify with one of the nation’s two major political parties intend to vote for the most unfit, vulgar and infantile person to ever enter US politics, even after two impeachments, four indictments, and the increasingly unhinged nature of his social-media blurtings cannot be permitted to be seen as a new normal.

Along those lines, New Right abandonment of the free-market component of conventional conservatism’s vision erodes the overall centrality of human freedom on which that vision rests. Some very smart people have gone in for this. It seems they have lost sight of what Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt had to say about how an individual’s freedom of choice about what to own, buy, sell, invent and market is a divinely granted gift. This one really does boil down to a binary choice. One is either free to come to an agreement with one’s fellow human being about the value of a good or service being considered for exchange, or we’re talking about central planning. Prattle about “settling for imperfect arrangements” that compromise this freedom of choice, this personal sovereignty, stinks of rudderlessness.

This is what I mean by inhabiting an ever-narrower sliver of terrain. There is no space in our public square for a healthy prescription for peaceable co-existence.

I then publicly forced myself to be real about my reaction to the lay of the land, and its spiritual implications:

That said, all the destructive devotions I’ve discussed here are embraced by my actual various fellow human beings, and I have to figure out how to hold them in some kind of basic regard. I pass them on the sidewalk. I host them for Thanksgiving dinner. They’re colleagues at the university where I teach. I have them as social-media friends. 

If I hold them in contempt, which Merriam-Webster defines as “the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn,” I cage myself in a kind of isolation in which productive existence becomes impossible. 

More fundamentally, in so doing, I sin. No matter what they have proclaimed or done, they were created by the same God who fashioned me, and have the same right to breathe and pursue happiness that I have.

The struggle hasn't abated. That has been brought home to me as I encounter the Trumpist response to the excellent victory for the international rules-based order achieved yesterday in the House of Representatives.  

The Federalist, a perfect example of a once-actually-conservative site that has been wholly given over to MAGA-ism, has among the daily sewage it's inflicting on the world this morning Shawn Fleetwood's piece in which he trots out the by-now-disgustingly-familiar look-Ukraine-can't-possibly-decisively-defeat-Russia-so-instead-of-shoveling-more-money-at-the-Ukrainian-resistance-to-being-invaded-we-ought-to-be-moving-toward-a-'realistic'-end-game angle. Not a word about the fierce determination of the Ukrainian people and leadership to reassert the country's sovereignty. Oh, and also that disingenuous zero-sum horseshit about the US southern border.

At the similarly septic American Conservative, Bradley Devin, in a piece titled "What's Next After the Ukrainian Mistake?" the author makes the help Johnson got on the House floor yesterday his focus, with a strong implication that Johnson was driven by a cynical foremost motivation of keeping his Speaker job.

Utah Senator Mike Lee, who is a prime example of this sepsis consuming a once-honorable-Constitutional originalist with a mainstream Rightist set of principles, decided to post on Twitter (X, if you must), a hey-look-we-got-'em-now reaction to the package's passing that lists objections of varying degrees of speciousness, such as - well, he starts out with that always-handy red herring, the US southern border - and including funding for gender advisors to the Ukrainian army and humanitarian aid to Gaza.

From his choices of objections and the way he words his screed, it's obvious he's reaching, while the sane majority - well, maybe it's just a plurality - of Westerners are celebrating the assertion of national sovereignty for three important West-inclined nations.

The Washington Examiner has a roundup of explanations from House Republicans who voted against the aid package. They strike a similar tone to the foregoing:

“I stand with the Ukrainian people in their fight against Russia, but not at the continued expense of hardworking American taxpayer,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY) wrote on X. “The United States cannot continue to spend blindly when those funds could be better utilitzed right here at home. As Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, I made a commitment to safeguard taxpayer funds from waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.”

“For the Swamp, it’s Ukraine First and America Last,” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) wrote. “Gleefully waving Ukrainian flags as the American people suffer under Biden’s border invasion.”

“We must be thoughtful and strategic with our dollars and put Americans first, which is why I voted to send funds to our borders, Israel, and Taiwan, and not send dollars to Ukraine until we have a strategic exit plan with quantifiable metrics,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) wrote in a statement.

Last month at Precipice, I wrote a post looking at a number of laudable, indeed noble, efforts of people who to some degree hang onto a self-identification as Republicans to plan for a time when the Trumpist infection passes out of the party. (In the process, I date myself as Boomer.) 

 

 

Some are more effective than others. I’ve written before about how Heath Mayo, founder of Principles First, badly dented his movement’s raison d’être by chiding Republicans for not signing on to legislation codifying same-sex marriage, calling such legislation a “no-brainer” that would strengthen the family unit. Such a position is a de facto resignation to secularization. Acknowledgement of a transcendent order becomes a quaint notion our society has outgrown if we listen to such an argument. 

Most self-identified conservatives can’t accept that.

Among publications that have sought to clearly repudiate the MAGA impulse, some have admirably continued to hew to a recognizable conservative vision (think The Dispatch) and some have bought into the binary-choice framing, which has made them Democrats for all intents and purposes (think The Bulwark; I was particularly dismayed to learn that Mona Charen had deemed the stay-home and consideration of a third party options as “the coward’s way out”).

The publication that has conferred Senior Freelance Contributor status on me, The Freemen Newsletter, has spawned an interesting undertaking. I’m not exactly clear on whether it’s going to be called the Reagan Caucus or the New Reagan Caucus, but a number of younger folks who appear on the masthead are having lively discussions on Twitter (X, if you must) and Slack regarding mission, tactics and standards for alliances.

The Freemen founding editor, Justin Stapley, laid out his druthers about the enterprise in a recent piece entitled “DeTrumpification of the GOP.” He sets the table by resolutely proclaiming what I assert above - namely, that despair is not an option, that our conservatism obliges us to see this as a universe of possibility. (He does so by taking issue with a 2021 Dispatch piece by Jonah Goldberg, someone high in Justin’s pantheon of good guys - and mine) in which Goldberg looks seriously at the third party option.)

Justin sees a Reagan Caucus thusly:

Taking Reagan as a symbol of an old-school approach to Republican politics and a commitment to conservative principles unstained by the reactionary nature of Trump’s brand of nationalist populism, this Reagan Caucus is declaring an intention to engage in the GOP's primaries and processes to push back against MAGA’s control of the party, and pledges to withhold their support of Republican candidates who embody or acquiesce to the toxic nature of the MAGA movement.   

If non-Trump conservatives take this path, it can solve several of the problems with the third-party route:   

• We could still participate in the Republican Party and wouldn't further abandon the party to the very forces we wish to curtail.  

• We would be encouraging more participation in the party processes instead of further enabling control of the processes by those we oppose. 

• We wouldn't be seen as a rival or spoiler political party.  

• We wouldn't be operating from the get-go as a spoiler effort.  

• We would have clear organizing principles and, especially, could demonstrate a contrast to the party's current direction given that the actual “agenda” of Trump and MAGA changes at his whim (TikTok).

• We could both endorse acceptable Republican primary candidates and actively work to get them through the process.   

• There would be nothing keeping us from endorsing acceptable Republican candidates who lost in the primaries as independent candidates should the eventual nominee prove to be wholly unacceptable, or throwing our support behind other independents or even third-party candidates.  

• The caucus's declared values would hopefully keep members from being less inclined to support Democrats unless the Democratic candidate moved to accommodate us as a more moderate alternative in the mold of Manchin or Sinema.  

I think this approach has a good shot at accomplishing what Jonah proposed in 2021 while answering the concerns many had with his proposal, including myself. There have long been various caucuses within both political parties and many other organizations and lobbying entities that support or withhold their support of party nominees based on declared principles.

So, the Reagan Caucus is not going to be doing anything new or threatening, and it could engage in ways that would still accomplish the goals that Jonah put forward, arguably in more effective ways given that we'd still be engaging in the GOP itself without other Republicans easily dismissing us as a rival or spoiler party. We could force a genuine debate on principles and vision that could transcend Trump and Trumpism instead of becoming a reflexive opposition that loses its intellectual grounding in the struggle of the general election. 

And besides, even most Trump voters still love Reagan, and this effort could be an effective way to provide a better contrast between an actual conservative vision and the angry, unprincipled direction that Trump has taken the party.

His optimism is enviable. Maybe he has an ear closer to the ground than I do, although I know a lot of local Republicans. Maybe that ground is more arable in Utah, where he lives, than it is here in Indiana.I think of my state’s gubernatorial race. There are four Republican candidates. The television ads of three of them try to outdo each other in boasting of the Trump connection. The fourth candidate has chosen a noteworthy departure, framing himself as being in the lineage of Reagan and Mitch Daniels, a universally admired Indiana native who served as everything from governor to president of Purdue University to president of the Hudson Institute to head of Eli Lily’s North America operations to Reagan’s OMB director. I don’t know much more about that candidate, but I’d still want an answer to the question of who he intends to vote for for president come November.

As I say, the folks who are fired up about this project are, from this Boomer’s perspective, young pups, and they are already setting about taking concrete actions - becoming Precinct Committeemen, running for office, deciding how to structure the project organizationally.

In their back-and-forths, they demonstrate a grounding in that which they ought to be grounded in. They know who Russell Kirk, Fredrich Hayek and Frank S. Meyer are. 

Two things: I hope they understand the ferocity with which the Trumpists will attempt to stomp them into the dust, and the challenge they’ll face maintaining their standards for forming alliances. I’m already seeing arguments along the-tent-must-be-big-enough-to-bring-in the-less-ate-up-Trumpists lines. That could muddy the mission from the get-go.

Please note the phrase about ferocity in the last paragraph of the above excerpt. And note how quickly the Trumpists went to work upon the passage of yesterday's aid package.

I have real trouble forgiving them for what they've done to conservatism's prospects. They're proud of their incoherence and their vaunting of stubbornness as a primary admirable basis for political engagement.

I'm trying really hard not to let this post become a venomous rant, but I can say that actual conservatives remain mired in a two-pronged existential battle: against a Left working overtime to impose climate alarmism, militant identity politics, and wealth redistribution, and a Right wholly given over to worship of the least savory traits human beings are capable of exhibiting. 

At this point, I still intend to stay home the first Tuesday in November. 

 

 

 

The rules-based international order just got some much-needed breathing room

 The House just passed an aid package that accomplishes the following:

The House passed the Israel Security Supplemental with a vote of 366-58.

Here's what the package includes:

• $26.4 billion to aid Israel
• $4 billion for the Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems
• $1.2 billion for the Iron Beam defense system
• $4.4 billion to replenish defense items and services provided to Israel 
• $3.5 billion for the procurement of advanced weapons systems and other items through the Foreign Military Financing Program
• $9.2 billion in humanitarian assistance – including emergency food, shelter and basic services – to populations suffering crises

It would also:

• Provide additional flexibility for transfers of defense items to Israel from US stockpiles held in other countries 
• Prohibit sending funds to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency

and 

The House passed the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act with a vote of 311-112. One member – GOP Rep Dan Meuser – voted present.  

Democrats cheered and waved Ukrainian flags during the vote.

The $95 billion package contains $61 billion for Ukraine and regional partners.

One of the bills would provide nearly $61 billion to assist Ukraine and others in the region fight Russia – about the same that was included in the Senate bill.

Of that total, about $23 billion would be used to replenish US weapons, stockpiles and facilities, and more than $11 billion would fund current US military operations in the region. 

Nearly $14 billion included in the bill would help Ukraine buy advanced weapons systems and other defense equipment. 

and

The House passed the Indo-Pacific Security Supplemental bill with a bipartisan vote of 385-34 plus one present vote: Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib. 

Here's what the package includes:

• $8.1 billion to counter China’s actions in the Indo-Pacific region
• $3.3 billion to develop submarine infrastructure
• $2 billion in foreign military financing for Taiwan and other key allies
• $1.9 billion to replenish defense items and services provided to Taiwan and regional partners

I hope that my feelings about Mike Johnson reflect that balance and nuance one ought to bring to historic moments where courage was the essential ingredient for insuring that the right thing was done. Yes, I have problems with his young-earth creationism and his election denialism. (I don't have any problems with his understanding of humans sexuality, an understanding most of humankind had until five minutes ago.) He's yet another Republican who has made the trek from a 2015 position of Trump lacking "the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House" to serving as a member of the Very Stable Genius's legal defense team during both impeachments.

But what he's done here - breaking with those in a position to imperil his Speakership, pressing ahead in the most precarious of circumstances - is the act of a man who mustered utter clarity about what the moment required of him.

This disseminates a couple of important messages on the world stage, to allies and enemies alike. First and foremost, it says that the United States - for the time being, anyway - is still willing to be the guarantor of a post-1945 order predicated on the idea that force can't be used to change the borders of sovereign nations. It also gives a strong indication that the legislative branch can still act decisively and morally, even when the executive branch's vision of the world stage is muddled.

So, kudos to those who voted in the affirmative on these measures.

The darkness still hasn't overcome the light.

 

 

DEI jackboots would have had Richard Slayman die

 I just had to click when I saw the title of Heather MacDonald's latest piece for City Journal: ""Kidneys Don't See Color."

I've seen a fair amount of coverage of DEI encroachment on hard sciences, and I know the diversity racket is MacDonalds's beat, so I had an inkling that this would be about medicine - probably surgery. 

That was indeed the case. MacDonald, after introducing Slayman, the recent recipient of a genetically modified pig kidney that allowed him to get off dialysis, gives an impressively thorough account of the history of surgical transplants. I recommend it. It's a very interesting tale of various developments over the last century-plus.

So what's not to like about Mr. Slayman's story?

According to STEM diversity dogma, however, none of this should have happened. Slayman is black; his transplant surgeons were not. The scientists who pioneered the biological and surgical advances that made the transplant possible were also nonblack. Worse, before the mid-twentieth century, those pathbreaking scientists were overwhelmingly white.

These demographic facts mean, according to today’s medical establishment, that Slayman was at significant risk of receiving substandard care from a medical and scientific enterprise that is racist to its core.

According to the National Academies of Science, America’s most prestigious science honor society, “systemic racism in the United States both historically and in modern-day society” produces “systematically inequitable opportunities and outcomes” in medicine. Such medical racism privileges white patients and white doctors, explains the National Academies of Science, and is “perpetuated by gatekeepers through stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.” The Journal of the National Cancer Instituteand its sister publication, Journal of the National Cancer Institute Spectrum, blasts the “systemic and institutional racism within health care” responsible for “inequities” in medical outcomes.

The best way to guard against such inequities, according to the STEM establishment, is to color-match patients and doctors. Similarly, the best way to advance science is to select scientists on identity grounds. The National Institutes of Health, which funds biological research, argues that a “diverse” scientific workforce will be better at “fostering scientific innovation, enhancing global competitiveness, [and] improving the quality of research” than one chosen without regard to racial characteristics. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, another federal funder, seeks scientists of the right color to “develop a highly competent and diverse scientific workforce capable of conducting state-of-the-art research in NIAID mission areas.” It is a given, per the National Academies of Science, that “increasing the number of Black men and Black women who enter the fields of science, engineering, and medicine will benefit the social and economic health of the nation.”

Slayman’s transplant surgeons—Leonardo Riella, Tatsuo Kawai, and Nahel Elias—came from non-European, non-white countries: Brazil, Japan, and Syria. Don’t think that those surgeons count as “diverse,” however. In the scientific establishment, as in all of academia, diversity at its core refers to blacks, with the other “underrepresented” minorities—American Hispanics and Native Americans—occasionally thrown in for good measure. When medical associations, medical schools, and federal agencies conduct diversity tallies (which they do obsessively), their primary concern is the proportion of blacks in medical education and practice. The American Medical Association’s chief academic officer, Sanjay Desai, is scandalized that “only” 5.7 percent of doctors identify as black, though blacks make up over 13 percent of the population. The American Society of Clinical Oncology’s March 23 bulletin complains that only 3 percent of practicing oncologists identify as black. By contrast, nearly 90 percent of hospital leadership “self-identify as White,” according to doctor Manali Patel. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases sees a crisis for medical science in the fact that “only” 7.3 percent of full-time medical faculty come from “underrepresented backgrounds,” though those “underrepresented backgrounds” constitute 33 percent of the national population.

The team leader in the Slayman transplant, Riella, directs a kidney transplantation research lab at Mass General. Its members look like a United Nations gathering, with researchers from Turkey, Lebanon, China, Spain, Japan, and other non-U.S. countries. Though white Americans are a small minority in the Riella Laboratory, it would not count as “diverse” for purposes of science funding or political legitimacy, because it has no blacks in it. We are to believe that this absence of blacks comes from white supremacist machinations, though those backstage white supremacists didn’t do a very good job of maintaining numerical advantage in the lab. And without blacks, the Riella Laboratory has never functioned at the highest levels of scientific achievement, according to diversity thinking.

Slayman may have had a positive outcome this time, despite being treated by nonblack transplant surgeons, but other black kidney patients have no guarantee that they will be as lucky in the future. In early April, the New York Times wrote about new techniques for keeping donated organs functioning outside of a body before transplant, a process known as perfusion. The transplant doctors whom the paper quoted—Daniel Borja-Cacho (originally from Colombia), Shimul Shah, Shafique Keshavjee, and Ashish Vinaychandra Shah—also don’t resemble the members roster of a Greenwich, Connecticut, country club, circa 1955. The Times undoubtedly tried to find a black source. Its inability to do so reflects a medical ecosystem that, according to the establishment, lacks diversity and, as such, puts black lives at risk.

This is the kind of jettisoning of not just compassion and medical ethics but basic common sense that has led to puberty blockers and teenage mastectomies.

Kudos to MacDonald for bringing this to our attention, but I think you know what LITD thinks the diversity jackboots who had a problem with this remarkable step forward deserve.. 

Easter is completely meaningless at the Biden White House

 The administration has blasted away at America's foundation with a double whammy.

Egg designers are to stay away from the actual reason why Easter is celebrated:

Children of the National Guard are prohibited from submitting religious Easter egg designs for the 2024 “Celebrating National Guard Families” art event at the White House. 

The art contest is part of the White House’s Easter traditions, which include the annual Easter Egg Roll.

The flyer for the contest states that an Easter egg design submission “must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements.” 

And get this:

Children are asked to design eggs with images based on their own lives.

Yes, indeed, nothing more important than what these toddlers have so far experienced in their not-much-more-than-blank-slate lives. Maybe they get extra points for designs that express their feelings about those lives. Never mind the risen Lord and the life available when we take up our cross and follow Him.

And since March 31 is the day when, since 2009, the federal government has made people with delusions about what sex they are feel comfortable in those delusions, the fact that it coincides with Easter this year ain't gonna stop this president from proceeding with proceedings:

President Biden this week declared Transgender Day of Visibility for March 31 — which this year is on Easter Sunday.

“I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., president of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility,” the Friday pronouncement read. 

“I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination against all transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary people.”

 Devout Catholic, my ass.

This is obviously not going to be the only noting of this trampling on sound-doctrine faith out there. But much of the consternation is going to come from the drool-besotted yay-hoos who intend to vote for the candidate who hawks pieces of his suit, calendars depicting himself in various macho fantasy settings, golden athletic shoes and sixty-dollar Bibles, who tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the last election, who, in 1997, after being introduced to her by Ghislane Maxwell, spent several days with a 20-year-old model at Mar-a-Lago and then put her up in one of his New York apartments, and who, when asked in 2016 what Easter meant to him, couldn't come up with anything meatier than that the holiday means "family and get-together" in a "beautiful church."

I wanted documentation to exist that actual conservatives are disgusted with the Biden administration's stripping of Easter of all significance.

I realize it's a position that requires some fleshing out, but I still intend to stay home in November. 

 

 

The UN, as usual, displays its moral vacuity for the world to see

 The Security Council did this:

The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution on Monday demanding an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas after the United States abstained from the vote, sparking a spat with its ally Israel.

The remaining 14 council members voted for the resolution - proposed by the 10 elected members of the body - that also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages. There was applause in the council chamber after the vote.

"This resolution must be implemented. Failure would be unforgivable," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres posted on social media.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the failure of the U.S. to veto the resolution was a "clear retreat" from its previous position and would hurt Israel's war efforts and bid to release more than 130 hostages still held by Hamas.

Ah, the hostages. What's life like for an Israeli being held captive by Hamas?

Amit Soussana has become the first Israeli woman to speak publicly about enduring what she says was a sexual assault and other forms of violence during her 55 days in captivity following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, according to reporting by The New York Times on Tuesday.

Abducted from her home by at least 10 men, Soussana said she was subjected to a horrifying series of events that saw her beaten and dragged into Gaza. The details of Soussana’s captivity paint a grim picture of her suffering; from being locked alone and chained by her ankle to being forced into performing sexual acts under the threat of a gun, according to The New York Times.

Soussana, a lawyer, was released in late November of 2023 as part of an exchange of hostages in Gaza who were kidnapped during the Hamas attack for Palestinian prisoners.

“Amit Soussana’s courageous testimony detailing her horrific captivity is one of many harrowing accounts from hostages held by Hamas,” the Hostages Families Forum said in a statement.

It added, “Amit is a hero, as are all hostages enduring this living hell for 172 agonizing days. We must bring these brave women and men home before it is too late.”

Soussana’s eight hours of interviews with The New York Times shed light on the psychological and physical torment she said she experienced at the hands of her captors, offering extensive details of her ordeal across several locations in Gaza, including in private homes and a subterranean tunnel.

Several days into her captivity, she said, her guard began asking about her sex life.

Soussana said she was held alone in a child’s bedroom, chained by her left ankle. Sometimes, the guard would enter, sit beside her on the bed, lift her shirt and touch her, she told The New York Times.

Soussana added that the guard repeatedly asked when her period was due. When her period ended, around Oct. 18, she tried to put him off by pretending that she was bleeding for nearly a week.

Around October 24, the guard, who called himself Muhammad, attacked her, she said.

Early that morning, she said, Muhammad unlocked her chain and left her in the bathroom. After she undressed and began washing herself in the bathtub, Muhammad returned and stood in the doorway, holding a pistol.

“He came towards me and shoved the gun at my forehead,” Soussana recalled. After hitting Soussana and forcing her to remove her towel, “Muhammad groped her, sat her on the edge of the bathtub and hit her again,” The New York Times reported, citing Soussana.

Dr. Ayelet Levy Shachar, mother of 19-year-old hostage Naama Levy, who was captured on video being dragged by her hair from the back of a Jeep at gunpoint in Gaza, her sweatpants stained with blood said, “Amit’s horrifying testimony is more proof that our loved ones in Gaza endure physical, sexual, and psychological torture every single day. Each day there is like an eternity.”

She said what happened to Amit “is the same nightmare so many other hostages, women and men, are facing every day in captivity. Maybe even at this very moment. We are begging – their lives hang in the balance. Bring our daughters and all our loved ones back to us now – before it is too late”.

I repeat: The conflict in Gaza could end this afternoon if Hamas did two things: release the hostages and dismantle itself.

It's not going to do either, so Israel has to go into Rafah. And every Palestinian child who starves or gets bombed or shot is on Hamas. 

The last thing we need is any vomit-inducing moral preening from the UN, or moral cowardice from the Biden administration. 

It's clear what has to happen. And it will, "world opinion" be damned.  

 

 

 

Imposing tyranny on two policy fronts: the family and energy

 LITD readers are familiar with my explanation regarding why, while I can't vote for a Republican Party that has wholly given itself over to the MAGA cult, I also cannot vote for any candidate of the Democratic Party. It's the party of climate alarmism, militant identity politics, and wealth redistribution.

The third characteristic is the means by which it enacts policies motivated by the first two.

Today's Exhibit A is the Biden administration's plan to subsidize day care:

It’s an election year, and so the Biden administration is going all-in on an ill-considered, poorly targeted campaign of subsidizing child care.

Biden’s child care plan is expensive social engineering that would create shortages and reward special interests while providing no help to millions of parents. While we grant it will get glowing press and might sound good in a stump speech, there are no redeeming traits to this plan. None. It is wretched from top to bottom.

“Make no mistake,” Vice President Kamala Harris posted last week. “President Joe Biden and I intend to cap child care costs at $10 a day for the average family and make preschool free for all four-year-olds.”

It’s imprudent for the government to spend tens of billions of dollars a year on child care at a time of record deficits and high inflation. Any pro-family spending or tax breaks Congress sees fit to provide should go to slight expansions of the child tax credit (indexing it for inflation, at the very least).

Giving parents money or letting them keep more of their own is obviously superior family policy because it gives parents a choice. Some will spend their tax savings on day care. Others will use the cash cushion as a way to work less and thus spend more time with children. Still others will use the money to build a granny flat or hire a nanny.

But the Biden administration seems dominated by ideologues who think there is only one right choice for a couple: two full-time jobs and institutional day care.

Most parents, however, do not want this. American Compass found in a 2021 poll that 53% of married mothers prefer to have one stay-at-home parent at least until the youngest child is in kindergarten.

This truth will be lost on the governing and media elites. “Whereas lower-, working-, and middle-class adults are most likely to choose a full-time worker and a stay-at-home parent as their ideal,” American Compass reported, “upper-class adults prefer both parents to work full-time and to rely on paid childcare.”

In this way, Biden’s day care subsidies are like his student loan bailouts: Wealth transfers to his highly educated, high-income base in high-cost states.

What’s more, the $10-dollars-a-day child care plan simply will not work. Ten dollars a day is the same tagline used by the liberal government of Canada, where the day care industry is imploding.

Subsidizing demand is not the way to make a thing more available and affordable. If you simply subsidize demand for a thing, it gets more and more expensive: See American healthcare and higher education.

Then there is the ever-more aggressive government interference in the agreements which millions of free individuals, some of whom produce cars and some of whom buy them, enter into as to what kinds of vehicles are produced and consumed, all in the name of forcing play-like energy forms down our throats:

The Biden administration is expected this week to finalize highly anticipated regulations targeting gas-powered vehicle tailpipe emissions, considered the tip of the spear in its efforts to electrify the transportation sector.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is slated to issue the final rulemaking — which officials have boasted will incentivize greater adoption of electric vehicles (EV), but which opponents have criticized as a de facto mandate — as soon as Wednesday, industry sources told Fox News Digital. The regulations, a key part of President Biden's climate agenda, would ultimately force automakers to more rapidly expand electric options in their fleets beginning in a matter of years.

They are targeting specific percentages:

Overall, under the proposal, which EPA unveiled in April 2023 and will go into effect in 2027, the White House projected that 67% of new sedan, crossover, SUV and light truck purchases would be electric by 2032. In addition, up to 50% of bus and garbage truck, 35% of short-haul freight tractor and 25% of long-haul freight tractor purchases could also be electric by then.

The White House said the proposal, which represents the most aggressive proposal of its kind ever proposed, would "accelerate the clean vehicle transition" and reduce oil imports by 20 billion barrels. Biden and climate activists have taken aim at the transportation sector over its high emissions profile — it alone produces roughly 29% of America's greenhouse gas emissions, federal data shows.

So, no, I can't subscribe to the idea that, because I understand what a disaster a Trump victory would be,  I'm obligated to vote for the alternative.

I'm staying home in November. I don't want the eternal record book to show I had anything to do with either form of American ruination. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am not moved by the binary-choice political argument - today's edition

 LTID readers who have been here any length of time know that I am unequivocally opposed to another Donald Trump presidency. I was opposed to the first one. I wrote in Evan McMullen when I voted in 2016, and Ben Sasse in 2020. Donald Trump had established himself as a solipsistic charlatan long before he descended the elevator in 2015. He has transformed the Republican Party into a cult and to a disgusting degree has defiled the worlds of conservative punditry and institutional Christianity.

But the Democratic Party is no alternative. It is too spiritually rotten for the nation to consider for governance.

Today's Exhibit A is the vice president's trip yesterday to Minnesota:

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday toured a health clinic that offers abortion services while she was in Minnesota, spotlighting growing restrictions on women's rights that Democrats believe will animate voters in November.

The visit, believed to be the first of a sitting president or vice president to such a clinic, comes as President Joe Biden highlights abortion rights as a key issue ahead of the November presidential election.

Harris arrived for a tour at Planned Parenthood's St. Paul Health Center-Vandalia facility as some two dozen anti-abortion protesters stood in the street outside holding signs that read, among other statements, "Abortion is not healthcare."

After completing a tour that was closed to the press, Harris said women in the country are undergoing "silent suffering" because of attacks on their health. The clinic in Minnesota's state capital provides a range of care, including birth control and preventive wellness services.

"Right now, in our country we are facing a very serious health crisis, and the crisis is affecting many, many people in our country," the vice president told reporters.

"I'm here at this healthcare clinic to uplift the work that is happening in Minnesota as an example of what true leadership looks like."

Democrats think personal freedoms could be a key issue for women, independents and other key voters after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade abortion rights in 2022. Harris has held more than 80 public meetings on the topic since then. 

This is not the occasion to revisit the entirety of what's happened to Western civilization since Rousseau and up through Shelly, Marx Freud, John Dewey, Hugh Hefner, Gloria Steneim et al. I've done so a few times at Precipice, and it's a subject of great importance. For our purposes here, let me say that what we've done over the last 400 years is jettison something key to human flourishing: acknowledgment of a transcendent order, of the fact that we are designed in certain ways and not others, that female human beings, like females of lower species, bear young. 

And I'm well aware of the very important debates going on within institutional Christianity regarding complimentarianism versus egalitarianism, which plays out in such ways as whether women can preach. I'm well aware of the boneheads such as John McArthur - he who infamously told Beth Moore to "go home" - and the damage they have done to the appeal of the Gospel to the unacquainted.

On a larger scope, I'm aware that there's no turning back regarding the leadership roles women have assumed in business and government. That ship has sailed, and civilization is the richer for it.

But the basic fact to which I allude two paragraphs above will not be disproved. The design of nature, and the fact of a designer who decreed it so, is impervious to the perverse trends by which we attempt to rebel.

To speak plainly, we can call a days-old embryo a pomegranate or a carburetor, but the fact remains that whatever term we use to deny his or her humanity, we each and all were one once.

Vice President Harris may couch her rebellion against the transcendent order in terms of women's health, or personal autonomy, but the Creator will not be mocked. 

Exhibit B is what Senator Chuck Schumer said yesterday:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the highest-ranking Jewish lawmaker, levied some of the harshest criticism yet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from a top U.S. official, calling on Israel to hold elections for a new government to deal with the threat of Hamas.

Why it matters: Democrats have felt increasing pressure from their left to deal with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and be tougher on Israel, while also standing with a key ally.

• Schumer had largely stayed away from criticizing the Israeli government and Netanyahu in recent months.
• His remarks come as President Biden and other Democrats are wary of alienating progressive voters who are concerned about Israel's attacks that have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.

Driving the news: Schumer said in prepared remarks that new elections are the "only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel."

• Schumer criticized Netanyahu for aligning himself with far-right extremists in the Israeli government, saying he has turned away from a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. Biden supports such a plan.
• "Nobody expects Prime Minister Netanyahu to do the things that must be done to break the cycle of violence, preserve Israel's credibility on the world stage, and work toward a two-state solution," Schumer said.

The big picture: Schumer said the four obstacles to a two-state solution are Hamas, far-right extremists in the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority and Netanyahu.

The other side: Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog fired back, "Israel is a sovereign democracy. It is unhelpful, all the more so as Israel is at war against the genocidal terror organization Hamas, to comment on the domestic political scene of a democratic ally.

• Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also rebuked Schumer for his remarks, labeling the Democrat's call for new Israeli elections as "unprecedented."
• "It is grotesque and hypocritical for Americans who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of a democratically elected leader of Israel," McConnell said.

To reiterate some basics, Israel is the only Western nation in a region hostile to Western values, it has had war waged against it multiple times since the 1947 founding of its modern iteration, the October 7 Hamas attack unified Israeli public opinion, and, yes, the Jews were selected by God to show the world how He wishes humankind generally to relate to him.

For Schumer to speak of a two-state solution before Israel has ended Hamas's existence, and as Hezbollah intensifies hostilities on the northern border, calls into question his understanding of the fundamental dynamics of the Mideast. 

A party whose most prominent leaders are so very much on the wrong side of the truth is no more qualified to steward the United States of America than the one slavishly devoted to the least dignified person to ever enter American politics.

I'm staying home in November.

You should, too. 

 

 

Biden, Pope Francis, and the rules-based international order

 The two hottest of the world's hot spots had the moral clarity with which they're fraught muddied by, respectively, the leader of the world's pre-eminent superpower and the worldwide leader of the Catholic Church.

After Biden announced, in his State of the Union address, the pier the US military will construct to get more aid into Gaza (which one would hope will work out better than the air drop, two parachutes of which didn't open, killing several Gazan on the ground, but, based on experience, is likely to be pilfered by Hamas, and may put US troops in harm's way), he was caught on a hot mic telling Colorado Senator Michael Bennet that he was going to tell Netanyahu "You and I are going to have a come-to-Jesus meeting."

Netanyahu has responded:

When asked on Sunday whether Israeli forces would move into Rafah, Netanyahu replied: "We'll go there. We're not going to leave them. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7 doesn't happen again. Never happens again." The PM was referring to the murderous Hamas raid that killed more than 1,160 people in Israel and triggered the war. 

Without naming them, Netanyahu claimed he had the tacit support of several Arab leaders for driving ahead with the onslaught against Hamas.

“They understand that, and even agree with it quietly,” he said in an interview with Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company. “They understand Hamas is part of the Iranian terror axis.”

And he again reiterates Israel's position on an idea whose time has definitely not arrived:

Israel's prime minister also doubled down on his rejection of the possibility of a Palestinian state — a topic that pits Israel against most of the rest of the world.

“The positions that I espouse are supported by the overwhelming majority of Israelis who say to you after October 7: 'We don't want to see a Palestinian state,'” he said. 

Netanyahu also directly addressed criticism from Biden, who has said the Israeli leader is “hurting Israel more than helping Israel.” 

Netanyahu hit back, saying while he didn’t know “exactly what the president meant,” if Biden was saying he was contravening the wishes or interests of Israel, he was “wrong on both counts.”

“[The Israeli people] also support my position that says that we should resoundingly reject the attempt to ram down our throats a Palestinian state. That is something that they agree on,” Netanyahu said.

When asked about the European view that there cannot be peace without a two-state solution, Netanyahu replied: "Yeah, they would say it. But they don't understand that the reason we don't have peace is not because the Palestinians don't have a state. It's because the Jews have a state. And in fact, the Palestinians have not brought themselves to recognize and accept the Jewish state."

Then there is the response of Ukraine and its allies to Pope Francis's blurting, which echoes both the Kissingerian Realpolitik camp as well as unhinged yay-hoos like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene - namely, that Ukraine needs to give up the idea of having its post-1991 borders restored: 

Ukrainian and allied officials Sunday criticized Pope Francis for saying that Kyiv should have the “courage” to negotiate an end to the war with Russia, a statement many interpreted as a call for Ukraine to surrender. 

The foreign ministers of Ukraine and Poland, a vocal ally of Kyiv, condemned the pope’s remarks. And a leader of one of Ukraine’s Christian churches on Sunday said that only the country’s determined resistance to Moscow’s full-scale invasion, launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24, 2022, had prevented a mass slaughter of civilians.

In an interview recorded last month with Swiss broadcaster RSI and partially released on Saturday, Francis used the phrase “the courage of the white flag” as he argued that Ukraine, facing a possible defeat, should be open to peace talks brokered by international powers.

“Our flag is blue and yellow. We live, die and win under it. We will not raise other flags,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba posted on Sunday on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted: “How about, for balance, encouraging Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine? Peace would immediately ensue without the need for negotiations.”

In his tweet, Kuleba urged the Holy See to “not repeat historical mistakes” as he alleged that the Vatican didn’t do enough to resist Nazi Germany. Yet he also invited Francis to Ukraine, saying the pope’s visit would show support for the “more than a million Ukrainian (Roman) Catholics, more than 5 million Greek Catholics, all Christians and all Ukrainians.” 

The head of Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said Sunday that surrender isn’t on the minds of Ukrainians.

“Ukraine is exhausted, but it stands and will endure. Believe me, it never crosses anyone’s mind to surrender. Even where there is fighting today: listen to our people in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy,” Shevchuk said while meeting with Ukrainians in New York City. He mentioned the regions that have been under heavy Russian artillery and drone attacks.

These matters look a little different to the nations whose sovereignty is threatened than it does to those who can adopt a -just-stop-all-the-icky-killing stance from the distance of well-defended capitols.

 

 

 

 

A night on which everything that makes post-America "post" was on display

 I didn't watch the SOTU speech, but I've read a pretty comprehensive array of takes. It appears to have been "fiery" (a word that has shown up in several headlines), with some left-of-center partisans saying it dispels any notions that Biden is senile. 

From the LITD perspective (again, on what I've gleaned of the content by reading about it), it seems to have been a mixed bag.

He is - and perhaps the stopped-clock-being-right-twice-a-day framing has some applicability here - spot on about the stakes in Ukraine. In fact, his choosing the opportunity afforded by that topic to point out the quashing of a painstakingly hammered out bipartisan bill that would have provided Ukraine aid and Israel aid and Taiwan aid and border resources, with cameras panning to Senator Lankford - he whose noble efforts in crafting it fell short - was a moment of moral clarity.

But his picking on Israel and this business about a port for aid to get into Gaza - aid that will be surely be pilfered by the enemy Israel must obliterate - was definitely not such a moment.

He unsurprisingly displayed the ignorance of basic economics common to pretty much everyone left of center by saying corporations and "the rich" needs be taxed more.

And of course, in driving home his theme of freedom, he had to include this "right" he sees for people to exterminate fetal Americans. 

I have no problem with his going after Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. The Very Stable Genius and the party he now completely dominates are at least as spiritually rotten as the Democrats, so it stand to reason that Biden is going to point out that rottenness.

The general consensus, even among Republicans, is that Katie Britt's Republican response was just plain goofy. As observers are saying, it's ripe for a parody skit on Saturday Night Live.

Then there was the array of costumes, buttons and all such regalia that yay-hoos of various stripes decided to come attired in. Hecklers. Walkers-out. Marjorie Taylor-Greene. 

And note must be taken of the re-routing of the motorcade from a straight shot up Pennsylvania Avenue because pro-jihad protestors felt self-righteous preening was a higher priority than public order.

A little something for everybody on a March Thursday night as we stare over the precipice into the abyss where the echoes of Western civilization's architects fade into silence.

The misery in Gaza could end in the next day

 So US Vice President Kamala Harris is doing what she does best - indulging in self-congratulatory moral preening - with a call for a 6-week ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and also chastising Israel for not doing enough to get aid into southern Gaza for good measure. 

Here's the hangup, Madame Veep: Hamas won't specify release numbers - either of the Israeli hostages it's holding captive or the number of its terrorists it wants released from Israeli prisons:

Israeli officials said on Sunday that Hamas responded to the proposal agreed with mediating countries in Paris last week, but still refuses to provide the names of Israeli hostages who are still alive and state how many Palestinian prisoners they demand would be released from Israeli prison, for each hostage freed.

"There is no Israeli delegation in Cairo," the officials said in reaction to Arab and American media reports that a delegation was making its way from Israel. "Hamas refuses to provide clear answers and therefore there is no reason to dispatch the Israeli delegation to the talks in Cairo," they said adding that position was agreed to by all relevant professional teams and was not exclusively the position of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Oh, and Hamas is insisting one one other little thing, which really makes the brokered talks for a ceasefire a non-starter:

A Hamas official said that the terror group has not backed down from its demand that a hostage release deal would include an end to the war. According to a report in the Qatari newspaper Al-Araby al Jadeed, Hamas rejects Israel's demand for names unless there is an agreement on the full withdrawal of IDF forces from Gaza.

No, that's the mirror opposite of what needs to happen.

Our hearts understandably go out when we see Gazan hospitals trying to treat injured and malnourished children with inadequate resources, but what doesn't get nearly enough mention is that Hamas has extensive tunnels underneath those hospitals as well as putting its jihadists working as UNRWA staff in schools, mosques and churches.

No, there could be not just a ceasefire, but an end to this entire conflict if Hamas would do two things: release all Israeli hostages and dismantle itself.

Only those without a functioning moral compass would deny this, a position that is pregnant with the implication that Hamas has some kind of valid point. 

It doesn't. It wants the state of Israel obliterated and Jews killed.

So here we are.