I’ve got three articles to share with you today. The first of all is a good news story coming from the good old USA.
“Death wanted him, but this day God said ‘no.’ He just said no.”
I’m trying to figure out how to colour code the hyperlinks to make them stand out, I’m trying to teach myself more about WordPress as I go along.
Another article that’s well worth your time is from the great Victor Davis Hanson on progressive antisemitism-why now?
“Anti-Semitism is only going to intensify. Both in America and Europe, it is naturally at home among the multicultural Left. The media, popular culture, universities, and left-wing political parties either cannot or will not stop it.
“Trump’s unwavering support for Israel and keen support of Jews also encourages leftists, in Pavlovian fashion, to attack anything that Trump favors. Prominent progressive Jews lack either the ability or the inclination to call out members of their own political persuasion — a fact that only encourages even more overt anti-Semitism.”
“So here is the near future: Every time the New York Times runs another anti-Semitic cartoon (and it will), each time a left-wing member of Congress questions the patriotism or morality of American Jews (and one will), and on every occasion Jewish students are harassed on campus (and they will be), we go another mile down the road to the well-known historical disaster that is looming ahead.”
Of course he is correct. And please spare me the talk of President Trump being antisemitic. He’s the worst antisemite ever. How many antisemities do you know with Jewish daughters and grandchildren, or who moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Give me a break.
Lastly, if you haven’t read it yet, do check out Mark Steyn’s incredible essay on our “Post-Free Speech World“.
It’s chilling and accurate, a perfect SteynBrew.
He notes that these are “very dark times for a meaningful culture of free speech”, and that “without a healthy respect for free speech you have no culture of honest inquiry”. Both these things are true and Mark has been sounding the alarm for years about the fact that free speech is the bedrock of our civilization.
But, as I noted in my own comment at The Mark Steyn Club, in my view, the average person actually does not want to be free.
The average person wants life to be easy and uncomplicated. Protecting freedom requires diligence, sacrifice, long-term vision and moral fortitude. So if the average person has to swallow an average or even a whopping number of lies in order to keep diving down easy street he or she will do just that.
Easy is seductive, malleable and relative. Truth is demanding and objective. The average person has much more power than he or she gives him or herself credit for, but most of the power simply comes from rejecting the lies and from protecting and treasuring free speech. Without free speech, everything crumbles.
I believe it is possible, but rare to recover from a dazed stupor of lies because it requires a tremendous amount of work, intellectual and philosophical curiosity.