What the NYT's David French Doesn't Tell You About the "Racism and Hatred" Allegedly Encountered at His Church

At one point after he moved to America, perhaps at the time that he published Spare, Prince Harry wrote that he would feel better if he could have a heart-to-heart talk with the rest of the royal family during which they could (wait for it…) apologize to him.

This is bonkers. First of all, a general comment: Britain's royal family is famously reticent about commenting on public matters — which makes Harry's public rants doubly offensive (at least to his family as well as to the the kingdom's numerous monarchy fans). 

Second, even if it were true that in-depth talks were needed, and even if the King and the Prince of Wales were willing to sit down with Harry, and even if it were true that Meghan Markle's husband wasn't partisan — which he obviously is, seeing no need, for instance, to consider his own hypothetical need to apologize to other members of the family (for instance, for… airing the family's… dirty laundry!) — why on Earth should anyone now trust the author of Spare (even if he is your son or brother) or trust his wife, when it is obvious that airing laundry (dirty or otherwise) — one with a personal spin or without (i.e., seeming attempts to be, or to appear, neutral) — is obviously part of their gig?

That is what came to mind while reading the New York Times column The Day My Old Church Canceled Me Was a Very Sad Day.

David French bemoans that he was canceled, but he then goes on to write one extended article trashing his church from one pew to the other, proving that the rest of Richmond's Presbyterian Church in America might, somehow, somewhere, have been far from wrong in canceling him in the first place.

Besides, was David French canceled? Or was it only his panel at a PCA assembly-wide seminar?

when I wrote pieces critical of Trump, members of the alt-right pounced, and they attacked us through our daughter. They pulled pictures of her from social media and photoshopped her into gas chambers and lynchings.

I have never seen these photo-shopped photos, and although I don't doubt some exist, I do doubt very much that there were more than, say, perhaps half a dozen of them (probably all made by the same person). As for conservatives and Republicans "pouncing", we have seen that description before and it is getting frankly tiresome…

We also received direct threats.

How many? Two? Three? And what kind of threats? Death threats (how believable were those)?

The church as a whole did not respond the way it did when I deployed [to Iraq in 2007]. 

Well, of course not. Why — why on Earth — should they?!

Instead, we began encountering racism and hatred up close, from people in our church and in our church school.

"Racism and hatred." Again, David French is proving to be a perfect leftist drama queen, with leftist "talking points" (sic), and going far in proving the Church far from wrong in canceling him.

There were terrible incidents of peer racism, including a student telling my daughter [an adopted girl from Ethiopia, now about 16 or so] that slavery was good for Black people because it taught them how to live in America. 

How many people said this? One. One person.

Another told her that she couldn’t come to our house to play because “my dad said Black people are dangerous.”

Another single person. By the way, who was the friend's father? The Reverend Jesse Jackson?

There were disturbing political confrontations. A church elder came up to my wife and me after one service to criticize our opposition to Trump and told me to “get your wife under control” after she contrasted his support for Trump with his opposition to Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair. Another man confronted me at the communion table.

First of all, many, indeed most, "disturbing political confrontations" take place on the Left. Where conservatives are regularly browbeaten, demonized, and, yes, canceled.

Apart from that, Mrs. French's remark is right on the mark. And guess what? a perfect subject for — lengthy — debate. Here's the only thing: in the final analysis, shouldn't the conclusion be reversed? Since the Left is allegedly composed of the people who are the most intelligent, the most intellectual, the most compassionate, and the most tolerant, doesn't it stand to reason that the Monica Lewinsky example (ignoring the fact that it involves a young lady barely out of her teens, and that, mere months if not weeks after the scandal occurred) — "It's only sex", remember— be used to counter the prosecution (the persecution?) of Donald Trump (his alleged paying a weathered professional sex worker for a romp two decades ago)?

On several occasions, men approached my wife when I was out of town, challenging her to defend my writing and sometimes quoting a far-right pastor …

Conservatives get this kind of behavior all the time. Not quoting far-right pastors, obviously, but far-left Drama Queens. Whenever I dated a French girl, a number of her friends invariably reacted (correctly or otherwise) – behind my back – with, "Mais il est pro-Trump!", "Ah mais il est pro-Bush!"

I do not want to paint with too broad a brush. Our pastors and close friends continued to stand with us. Our church disciplined the man who confronted me about Trump during communion. And most church members didn’t follow politics closely and had no idea about any of the attacks we faced.

Whoah. Whoah! WHOAH!

Now, in one of the final paragraphs (!), we get this shocker: "most church members … had no idea about any of the attacks we faced." Which goes to prove that the Church (or some of their members, at least (since it turns out… that… "most church members … had no idea about any of the attacks we faced"), had at least some reason to cancel (if that is the correct word) a member with a "divisive reputation" who would pen a misleading thesis such as this one.

You "do not want to paint with too broad a brush", David French?! You just did one heck of a generalization the likes of which recalls the United States is a despicable hell-hole because — 250 years before the nation's founding — one single white man in Virginia purchased two dozen Black slaves.

My commitment to individual liberty and pluralism means that I defend the civil liberties of all Americans, including people with whom I have substantial disagreements.

Except for Donald Trump, January 6 "rioters", and other Republicans who do not fit into the Rino universe.

David French links Michael Gryboski's Christian Post article (twice), but conveniently refrains from quoting any part of it:

PCA Teaching Elder Ben C. Dunson wrote a column denouncing French's involvement, citing French's support for legalizing same-sex marriage, anti-Trump statements, defense of drag queen story hours and how he allegedly "besmirches the character of Christians who disagree with him on these issues."

Is it hyperbole or exaggerated or otherwise wrong to say that David French "besmirches the character of Christians who disagree with him"? I think not. Just think of… the present article, the one that he wrote for the New York Times, the one that ends with these stirring words:

Race and politics trumped truth and grace, and now I’m no longer welcome in the church I loved.

That's one solid piece of solid drama queenery from someone who had just acknowledged that "most church members didn’t follow politics closely and had no idea about any of the attacks we faced."

Besides, PCA Teaching Elder Ben C. Dunson's column hardly seem like the ravings of a religious lunatic: 

Virtually everything French writes or says is about the danger posed to America by Donald Trump and a sizeable percentage of the Republican Party and evangelical church. … French has made it clear that only one presidential candidate is a threat to “our democracy.” How can he then be thought able to help guide pastors in how to deal with political polarization? If the goal of the seminar was to present arguments for and against the two Presidential candidates, perhaps things would be different, assuming there was a vigorous voice on the other side of the issues from French, but that is not what this seminar is intended to do.

To be fair to David French, that is not anything that any leftist debate, newspaper, or presentation is intended to do. In a follow-up piece, Ben C. Dunson proves surprisingly clear-eyed as he grabs the (devilish?) issue by both horns. The PCA Teaching Elder starts by dissecting the Left's obvious hypocrisy: 

Many who are upset with the panel being cancelled have labelled this as an instance of conservative cancel culture, a “caving to a mob mentality,” and have said that the decision of the assembly gives “in to the wrath of very online voices.” It is easy to understand why this claim would be made, because it adds the taint of hypocrisy to the whole affair. After all, conservatives were the ones years ago sounding the warning about cancel culture. If one can make the charge of cancel culture stick, then conservatives can be made out to be the something like the new Antifa, shouting their opponents into silence, rather than calmly, respectfully, and logically engaging with their ideas.

What happened with the GA panel is not, however, an instance of cancel culture … What would be necessary for such a panel to be fair and judicious? The obvious answer is that it would need to represent all sides of an issue and grant all sides the freedom to speak openly on it. This does not appear to be the case with regard to the original makeup of the panel. … Having panel members who hold extremely strong public positions against one candidate for the Presidency without panel members with equally vigorous support for that Presidential candidate all but ensures that the panel would have been ideologically lopsided.

Which, again, is par for the course when you have a left-leaning debate, newspaper, media outlet, etc…

To his credit, David French quotes a Federalist piece, albeit linking it to the verb "ranted" (instead of to the publication's name, i.e., The Federalist). Let us end this post with the words of Kylee Griswold:

 … the Pharisaical metanarrative is a familiar one: a self-righteous religious leader who sets his own rules, measures his opponents by them, morphs those rules when it suits him, and then boisterously gives thanks that he’s not like the unpalatable white Trump voters over there.

French is not so much a regime handmaiden as he is a court eunuch who became so by choice and nonetheless thinks he is in a position to lecture others on masculinity. He’s a turncoat who scolds others about loyalty, a liar convinced he’s the last honest man on Earth, and a party apparatchik whose vaunted principles always seem to align with his paychecks. 

In recent years, he’s made a name for himself using Sunday — the traditional Christian day of rest and worship — to smear the faithful for the unpardonable sin of believing God’s law is superior to man’s law.

So it’s a shame the Presbyterian Church in America saw fit to grant French a pulpit from which to slime the faithful.

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves,” the gospel of Matthew warns. The PCA isn’t just ignoring that warning. They’re giving the wolf a brand new wool coat and microphone and daring the sheep to object.

Related: In NYTimes Essay, Columbia U Professor Praises 1950s Communist Dad for Remaining True to His Convictions 

 • The January 6 Protest Summarized in One Single Sentence

• The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence  

• Republicans Pounce! Dept. After Pouncing, Seizing, Gloating, Latching, etc, etc, etc , Now "Demonizing" Republicans Are "Exacting Revenge"… "

GET SERIOUS in 2024: 20 GOTV (Get Out To Vote) Posters and Illustrations Can Be Downloaded Early This Year; For Free

From Damien Bennett, we have an announcement that GOTV (Go Out To Vote) Posters and almost two dozen spot illustrations can be downloaded early this year in hopes that they will be used to "decorate more refrigerator doors and kitchen cork boards" until "seriosity take[s] hold across the land." 

This cycle's theme is 'GET SERIOUS', because clown world would not have us serious. 

 … The GOTV poster is nonpartisan and encourages red people and blue people and green people, the independent, and the wishy-washy – all qualified American citizens – to register, inform themselves, and vote.

The 20 spot illustrations (shouldn't there be 24?!) include

Triple Secure Ballot [see directly above]; Spoiled Ballot; Duplicate Registration Fraud; Dead Voter Fraud; Lost’ Ballot;  Mail-in Fraud; Destroyed Ballot; Vote Reassignment’ Hack

"A FREE ZIP of the 2024 GOTV poster and the portfolio of editorial spot art can be downloaded" at the link

"A banana republic—if you can keep it"

According to the Wall Street Journal's Editorial Board, the case against Donald Trump is akin to a "Russian nesting doll structure" doubling as "a bizarre turducken":

The nation might soon regret this rough turn. [The] guilty verdict wasn’t entirely surprising, given the jury pool in Manhattan. If Mr. Trump had lucked out, he might have drawn one or two stubborn skeptics, like the Henry Fonda character in “12 Angry Men,” resulting in at least a hung jury. Instead the fortunate one was Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who filed the weakest of the four indictments of Mr. Trump, but who managed to drag his case first over the finish line.

 … Mr. Bragg might have opened a new destabilizing era of American politics, and no one can say how it will end.

Courtroom dramas, both literary and cinematographic, such as (multi-awards-nominated) 12 Angry Men and (Pulitzer-Prize-winning) To Kill a Mockingbird, were once the darlings of liberals. Until it was no longer convenient to treat stories exposing lynch mob hysteria as such (thanks to Ed Driscoll).

In response to the WSJ, David Gay invokes Benjamin Franklin's single most famous sentence (thanks to Vincent Bourdonneau) as he writes from Alamo Heights, Texas:

Regarding your editorial “A Guilty Verdict and Its Consequences” (May 31):

If President Biden were asked what kind of government we have, he could reply honestly: A banana republic—if you can keep it.

As Dennis Prager writes, 

one must first understand the most important rule of modern life: Everything the Left touches it destroys.

The Justice Department and the American legal system are only the most immediate examples.

 … The reason for the trial was the same reason dictatorships put opponents on trial: to prevent them from assuming or regaining power.

When dictatorships do this, such as in the former Soviet Union, we call it a show trial -- because the verdict has been predetermined. The "hush money trial" was such a trial. The first such trial of an American president and head of the opposition in American history.

 … Andrew C. McCarthy, a former assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York (which includes Manhattan) and no Trump fan, writes:

"The country we love has become unlovely. ... Our system embodied the rule of law, the sturdy undercarriage of a free, prosperous, pluralistic society. Now, on its good days, it's a clown show. On the bad days -- there are far too many of those -- it's a political weapon. ...

"As the rule of law degrades into the rule of partisan lawyers, a constitutional republic inexorably decays into a banana republic. And it won't take long. Again, this isn't about Trump. ...

"To objective, experienced eyes, Alvin Bragg's prosecution of Trump shocks the conscience. ... The DA did not so much find a crime as manufacture one."

What Bragg did was to turn a misdemeanor -- whose statute of limitations had expired -- into a felony under a New York statute that requires an accompanying crime without ever explaining what that secondary crime was.

We are bequeathing our children and grandchildren a completely different country than the one our parents, grandparents and Founders bequeathed to us.

Trump Conviction: The Manhattan "DA did not so much find a crime as manufacture one"

To understand the damage done by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Judge Juan Merchan, and the Manhattan jury in the Donald Trump corporate records trial.

writes Dennis Prager,

one must first understand the most important rule of modern life: Everything the Left touches it destroys.

The Justice Department and the American legal system are only the most immediate examples.

Here are 25 other examples:

1. Universities.

2. High schools.

3. Elementary schools.

4. Children's innocence.

5. Marriage and family.

6. Children who say they are the other sex.

7. Journalism.

8. Women's psychological health.

9. Black life.

10. Black-white relations.

11. Art.

12. Music.

13. Architecture.

14. The military.

15. The FBI.

16. The CDC and NIH.

17. The American Medical Association and most other medical associations.

18. Medical schools.

19. Free speech.

20. Women's sports.

21. The border.

22. Religion.

23. The economy.

24. Fighting crime.

25. America's major cities.

In the case of the Trump trial, the Left has done something never done before in American history: put on trial a former president and the opposition political party candidate for president.

The Left responds that it was morally necessary to do something heretofore associated only with corrupt dictatorships because Donald Trump had engaged in criminal activities that heretofore no presidential candidate or ex-president has ever engaged in. And "no one is above the law."

But this response is a lie. The reason for the trial was the same reason dictatorships put opponents on trial: to prevent them from assuming or regaining power.

When dictatorships do this, such as in the former Soviet Union, we call it a show trial -- because the verdict has been predetermined. The "hush money trial" was such a trial. The first such trial of an American president and head of the opposition in American history.

 … Andrew C. McCarthy, a former assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York (which includes Manhattan) and no Trump fan, writes:

"The country we love has become unlovely. ... Our system embodied the rule of law, the sturdy undercarriage of a free, prosperous, pluralistic society. Now, on its good days, it's a clown show. On the bad days -- there are far too many of those -- it's a political weapon. ...

"As the rule of law degrades into the rule of partisan lawyers, a constitutional republic inexorably decays into a banana republic. And it won't take long. Again, this isn't about Trump. ...

"To objective, experienced eyes, Alvin Bragg's prosecution of Trump shocks the conscience. ... The DA did not so much find a crime as manufacture one."

What Bragg did was to turn a misdemeanor -- whose statute of limitations had expired -- into a felony under a New York statute that requires an accompanying crime without ever explaining what that secondary crime was.

 … As regards Judge Merchan, McCarthy writes: "Merchan ensured that actual federal law would not intrude. He denied Trump's defense the right to call former FEC commissioner Bradley Smith, who would have explained" how Trump paying Stormy Daniels not to speak publicly about her allegation that she and Mr. Trump had once engaged in a one-night stand was "Bragg's fairy tale that Trump stole the 2016 election by skirting FECA reporting requirements" and was "utter fiction, in addition to being legal nonsense."

In other words, the corrupt judge prevented the most important expert defense witness from testifying on Trump's behalf.

But the Left got what it wanted: the right to label President Trump, in the words of the lead editorial in the similarly corrupt New York Times, "Donald Trump, Felon."

We are bequeathing our children and grandchildren a completely different country than the one our parents, grandparents and Founders bequeathed to us.

In addition to broaching the subject on his Fireside Chat, Dennis Prager also quotes Jonathan Turley -- not a Trump supporter -- a professor of law at George Washington University, who "has perfectly made the case for this being a show trial."

Gigi: A D-Day Survivor's Tale of WWII and the G.I. She Met

Les porte-drapeaux Gary (Nadeau)
Nadolski et Gigi (Laîné) Nadolski

Among the participants at the September 11 commemoration in Paris last year, was a Franco-American couple who were flag carriers Gary (Nadeau) Nadolski and Gigi (Laîné) Nadolski

Gigi (Laîné) Nadolski is the second standard-bearer from the left
while Gary (Nadeau) Nadolski is the first flag-bearer from the right

A D-Day Survivor from Normandy Is Still Together with the American GI She Met After WWII

The interview starts with the interviewee questioning the No Pasarán interviewer (moi) about the flag (thanks to Sarah) I was carrying and what the snake upon it symbolizes. (A few times that I have taken the flag to pro-America demonstrations, members have wearily asked me if I wasn't some leftist trying to crash the demonstration with a symbol of something critical, even devilish.) I explain to one and to all that it was/is the Navy Jack flown by the USA's first ships in the late 1700s. Bearing a rattlesnake and the words "Don't Tread on Me", the First Navy Jack is based on the Gadsden Flag.

At 1:11, Mrs. Nadolski explains that she was a little girl of 7 in Normandy on June 6, 1944 (then named Gigi Laîné), and that she remembers the day very well.

I get up with my parents and my sister, and we see things falling from the skies. My parents tell me, We are all leaving our home and going to hide in a ditch. Bombs start falling around the house and thank God we got out, because a bomb landed on our house. So we didn't go back, we stayed in the ditch for six days. My two elder brothers went to the farm next door to get food.

After the war, my parents//my mother put us in a boarding school in Paris went to live in a , because they had no more. After the war, my parents could not rebuild their farm, the government did not want to pay our bills, I'm not too sure about the details, so we stayed in the boarding school for seven more years. Every morning, for the first years at the boarding school, we received peanut butter every morning, it was the first time I had ever tasted that.

My husband I met on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. It turned out that we were both working for NATO, he on the seventh floor and I on the ninth floor of the same building.  I worked for the administration and he in another section. And one day he invited me to drink a café on the Champs-Élysées. Then he invited me to a movie, and we continued dating, and that's how it all started.

At one point, we were transferred to the United States, and in Chicago I immediately got a job, working for the Encyclopedia Britannica. We stayed 27 years in the U.S., I became an American, and my children are all born in Chicago. They have dual citizenship, and so do I. But when I go to America, I lose my French nationality. You're not allowed to have dual citizenship in America. [This is not true, a mistake.] But I am French, 100%. Being an American is perfect, but I prefer being French. 

The 22nd Commemoration in Paris of the September 11, 2001 (911 9-11) Attacks Anniversary

A l'occasion du 22eme anniversaire des attentats du 11 septembre, un hommage organisé par la Mairie du 16ème Arrondissement a été rendu aux victimes devant l'Arbre de la Liberté sur la Place des États-Unis.

Parmi les nombreux participants, dont the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) et the American Legion Paris Post 1, on a pu reconnaître Erik Svane (holding his Navy Jack), Paul Reen, et Marie-Thérèse Foreau de RIF, ainsi que les porte-drapeaux Gary (Nadeau) Nadolski et Gigi (Laîné) Nadolski.

Gigi (Laîné) Nadolski is holding the Stars and Stripes while
Gary (Nadeau) Nadolski is holding the American Legion's dark blue banner

Wearing red white 'n' blue while bringing
the First Navy Jack to the 911 commemoration

Gigi (Laîné) Nadolski is holding the Stars and Stripes while
Gary (Nadeau) Nadolski is holding the dark blue banner of American Legion Paris Post 1

 

Appearance on BFMTV and Interview for Le Parisien Daily

Regarding the Trump conviction, I was interviewed on BFMTV on July 1 at 5 pm by Julie Hammett on Julie jusqu'à Minuit. Much of what I said were similar talking points as those from this post.

J'étais aussi interviewé par Salomé Vincendon pour son papier avec Camille Bluteau dans Le Parisien, mais mes propos ne semblent finalement pas avoir été retenus. Voici ce que je lui avais écrit :

Est-il exact d'affirmer, comme le fait le New York Times, que « la condamnation du président dans le cadre d'une enquête criminelle à New York [révèle], une fois de plus, pourquoi il est inapte à exercer ses fonctions » ?

Avec cette armada de huit ans de impeachments, d'enquêtes et de procès, ne faut-il pas se réjouir que les démocrates transforment les États-Unis en une république bananière, avec des tribunaux fantoches se livrant à des procès-spectacles, afin de "transformer fondamentalement" le pays en un État à parti unique ?

Donc Donald Trump serait désormais un criminel reconnu coupable ?

Pour mettre cela en perspective : Sakharov était un criminel reconnu coupable. Soljenitsyne était un criminel reconnu coupable. Vaclav Havel était un criminel reconnu coupable. Martin Luther King était un criminel reconnu coupable. Et Nelson Mandela était un criminel reconnu coupable.

Autant nous dire que le sort de Sakharov prouve que Léonid Brejnev était un citoyen bien plus intègre que ne l'était le physicien, alias « l'ennemi intérieur numéro un ». Autant dire que les 18 années passées par Mandela dans la cellule de la prison de Robben Island prouvent la décence totale, et la nécessité nationale pour l'existence, du gouvernement d'apartheid en Afrique du Sud.

Un tweet X amer que j'ai lu hier déclare amèrement que de toutes les façons, Trump «va toujours foutre la [emoji de m--de] autant que possible et sans vergogne.»

Vivre sous un régime communiste ou une dictature de l'apartheid vous donne le droit – voire… le devoir – de «foutre la [emoji de m--de] autant que possible et sans vergogne.»

L’Amérique de la Gauche a finalement compris que les Occidentaux avaient tort d’exiger que l’Union soviétique, la Chine communiste et les régimes similaires imitent les États-Unis et les démocraties libérales de l'Europe Occidentale. Au lieu de cela, les États-Unis et les pays de l'Europe devraient essayer de ressembler davantage à une république bananière comme la Chine, Cuba ou le Venezuela.

What Other Countries Have Persecuted and Prosecuted Opposition Leaders?

After the Trump verdict, Peter Aitken of Fox News asks, Who else is on the list of infamous countries that prosecuted opposition leaders?

(See also: Who Else, Besides Donald Trump, Is a Convicted Felon?)

Donald Trump joins a growing list of world leaders convicted after leaving office, with many critics in the U.S. claiming that such measures hurt the country’s image as a global leader. 

 … Here are some other countries where opposition leaders or candidates have faced prosecution, sometimes even ahead of elections. 

RUSSIA

No case in modern politics of opposition suppression stands as notorious as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing saga to keep his chief political rival Alexei Navalny out of office: Russian courts determined Navalny had violated probationary terms by leaving the country, during which time he suffered an attempt on his life while in Germany.

 The Russian court ultimately convicted Navalny on charges of extremism and sentenced him to 19 years in prison, where he ultimately died due to brutal conditions during his confinement. …

HONG KONG

Trump’s verdict overshadowed news out of Hong Kong that 14 opposition figures had been convicted of "conspiring to subvert state power," drawing condemnation from watchdog groups such as Amnesty International, who called the decision "unprecedented" and "the most ruthless illustration yet of how Hong Kong’s National Security Law is weaponized to silence dissent."

Former lawmakers Leung Kwok-hung, Lam Cheuk-ting, Helena Wong and Raymond Chan are among the dozen defendants who could face life in prison when sentenced later this year, ABC News reported. …

INDIA

Critics have accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of using the courts to prevent his main political rival Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister of the capital Dehli, from running and campaigning for the upcoming elections. …

BRAZIL 

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won re-election in 2022 after leaving prison due to the country’s Supreme Court nullifying his conviction on money laundering and corruption charges, citing serious biases in the case against him.

Lula, arrested as part of "Operation Car Wash," allegedly had traded favors with a construction company in exchange for the promise of a beachfront apartment. His arrest and conviction deeply divided Brazil and led to heated legal back-and-forth over the following years. 

Fox News gets it totally wrong here: the only official being prosecuted is Lula's opponent, Jair Bolsonaro — the president who has been hounded ever since he claimed that Lula's socialists "won" the 2022 election only through voter fraud. (Obrigado to Sarah Hoyt.)

VENEZUELA

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has seen a number of his opponents jailed for various crimes, with opposition leader Nelson Pinero of the center-right Encuentro Ciudadano party recently jailed on charges of incitement to hatred, El País reported. 

The Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin) allegedly entered Pinero’s house without a search warrant. Another politician, presidential candidate Delsa Solorzano, denounced the arrest, saying that "Nelson is one more political prisoner of this dictatorship, which has taken 300 citizens to jail for thinking differently." …

CAMBODIA

Kem Sokha, the Cambodian opposition leader, was convicted of treason and sentenced to 27 years in jail. He appealed his charges, which Amnesty International condemned as "baseless" and urged the country’s authorities to "end their ongoing crackdown against opposition groups."

As I wrote in irony last August:

In conclusion, can't we say that Americans are lucky?

America has finally figured out that people in the West were wrong to demand that the Soviet Union, Communist China, and like régimes should imitate the United States. Instead, the USA should try to become more like a banana republic such as China, Cuba, or Venezuela. …

• Related: Who Else, Besides Donald Trump, Is a Convicted Felon?

Who Else, Besides Donald Trump, Is a Convicted Felon?

So Donald Trump is now a convicted felon?

News item:

Sakharov was a convicted felon.
Solzhenitsyn was a convicted felon.
Vaclav Havel was a convicted felon.
Martin Luther King was a convicted felon.
And Nelson Mandela was a convicted felon.

You might as well tell us that Sakharov's fate proves that Leonid Brezhnev was a far more upstanding citizen than was the USSR's "Domestic Enemy Number One." You might as well say that Mandela's 18 years in Robben Island jail cell proves the utter decency of, and the national need for, South Africa's apartheid government.

One bitter X tweet I read yesterday states bitterly that Trump is "still going to stir [shit emoji] up left and right, as loudly and unabashedly as possible.

News item # 2: living under a communist régime or an apartheid dictatorship gives you the right — nay, gives you the duty — to "stir [shit emoji] up left and right, as loudly and unabashedly as possible." (Thanks for the Instalink, Sarah)

Is it accurate to claim, as does the New York Times, that the "president's conviction in an New York criminal trail [reveals], yet again, why he is unfit for office"?

Or is it more accurate to say that the eight-year-long armada of impeachments, investigations, and court cases suggests that the Democrats are turning the United States into a banana republic, complete with kangaroo courts engaging in show trials, in order to "fundamentally transform" the country into a one-party state?

• Related: Don't Mugshots of MLK, Vaclav Havel, Solzhenitsyn, and Mandela Prove that Those Scoundrels — Convicted Felons All — Fully Deserved Their Fate?

… In conclusion, can't we say that Americans are lucky?

America has finally figured out that people in the West were wrong to demand that the Soviet Union, Communist China, and like régimes should imitate the United States. Instead, the USA should try to become more like a banana republic such as China, Cuba, or Venezuela. …

• Related: What Other Countries Have Persecuted and Prosecuted Opposition Leaders?

We're Protesting the Flag on Alito's Roof!

 

"We're protesting the flag on Alito's roof!"
— cartoon by Chip Bok

Radio Courtoisie — Entre Memorial Day et D-Day : Les 80 ans du Jour le plus long

Le 29 mai 2024, Evelyne Joslain, assistée d’Eric, reçoit :

• Erik Svane, journaliste

Thème : “Entre Memorial Day et D-Day : Les 80 ans du Jour le plus long”

Le Débarquement du 6 juin 1944 est le sujet du jour, tout comme le reste de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, et sur des thèmes comme les contributions de l'Armée Rouge à l'est, tandis que trois versions de la musique du film The Longest Day seront joués, à la grande joie des auditeurs, dont une par Paul Anka (qui apparaît dans le film comme un U.S. Army Ranger à l'assaut de la Pointe du Hoc) et une autre par Mitch Miller.

Les Plages du Débarquement
• Caen et Pegasus Bridge                     (Read the English version)
• Sword, Juno, et Gold
• Arromanches, Musées, et Longues-sur-Mer
• Omaha Beach et les Cimetières
• La Pointe du Hoc, Sainte-Mère-Église, et Utah Beach

Patron d'émission du Libre journal du Nouveau Monde à Radio Courtoisie, Évelyne Joslain est l'auteur d'une poignée de livres sur les États-Unis et l'Occident. Parmi ceux-ci, son chef d'œuvre est paru il y a queques semaines.

Quatre revues de livre sur sont parues à ce jour, deux sur No Pasarán et Le Monde Watch, une autre revue sur Les 4 Vérités (sous le titre La Guerre Culturelle : un livre incontournable) et une dernière revue sur Dreuz (sous le titre “La Guerre Culturelle” d’Évelyne Joslain – un livre indispensable sur les dangers qui vous menacent).

Cliquez sur le lien pour entendre l'émission d'une heure et demie…

For 16 years, on every June 6, the D-Day anniversary was commemorated at No Pasarán — in addition to a link to my (oft-praised) "story of D-Day" — by one line from Paul Anka's thrilling score from the film The Longest Day, one of the best war movies (and simply one of the best movies) ever made.

For those who might be interested, below are the lyrics sung by Mitch Miller and the Gang, the commemorations, and the hyperlinks from 2007 to 2022:

The first three commemorations were simply the title and a link to the story of D-Day; by 2010, I was adding photos, cartoons, and/or various links to the posts…

Many men came here as soldiers
Many men will pass this way
Many men will count the hours
As they live the longest day

Many men are tired and weary
Many men are here to stay
Many men won't see the sun set
When it ends the longest day

The longest day, the longest day
This will be the longest day
Filled with hopes and filled with fears
Filled with blood and sweat and tears

Many men, the mighty thousands (75th anniversary edition)
Many men to victory
Marching on, right into battle
In the longest day in history

Gaza: The Left cares about dead black people, whether in America or in Africa, only when they are killed by whites

With The Genocide Libel Is the Blood Libel of Our Time, you can count on Dennis Prager to get to the bottom of the issue.

The author of the Rational Bible series even manages to explain why the original blood libel is necessarily false:

In medieval Europe, Christians who hated Jews spread the lie that Jews kidnap Christian children, slaughter them, and use their blood to bake matzos for Passover. This lie became known as "the Blood Libel," probably the greatest libel in history. Over the course of many centuries, Jews were tortured and murdered, often by being burned alive, because of the Blood Libel.

The Blood Libel was particularly odious in light of two facts: It was the Jews who, through their Bible, first outlawed human sacrifice; and one of the first laws in the Hebrew Bible is a ban on consuming blood.

Dennis Prager goes on to take on the current blood libel:

For centuries, Jews had to confront the fact that all around them, throughout Europe, a vast number of people believed an enormous lie about them. Jews have to confront the same thing today. We are now living through the Second Blood Libel: the claim that the Jewish state is committing genocide. But, unlike the Blood Libel, this libel is not the product of Christians; it is the product of Muslims and the Left. The very people against whom the greatest genocide in recorded history -- the Holocaust -- was directed are now accused of that crime.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 1948, there were 1,380,000 Palestinians in Israel and the greater Palestine area, and as of 2022, there were 7 million. In other words, there are now five times as many Palestinians in the Palestinian territories and in Israel as there were in 1948.

 … given these figures, even leftists would be forced to acknowledge that Israel has never had the slightest inclination to perpetrate genocide against the Palestinians. People targeted for genocide do not increase their numbers -- let alone by a factor of five.

What the Left and their Muslim allies claim is that since Oct. 7, Israel has presumably changed its mind and decided to commit genocide against Palestinians (though, apparently, only in Gaza, not in the West Bank).

Here are some facts that explain why the charge of "Israeli genocide" is as much a lie as was the Blood Libel:

First, as Israeli officials have repeatedly stated, if Hamas released the hostages and surrendered, Israel would cease its bombing of Gaza. That was precisely the condition that the United States and its allies offered Japan and Germany: Unconditionally surrender, and the bombing of Japanese and German cities will immediately cease.

Second, World War II brings us to more proof that the charge of Israeli genocide is a lie. No one ever accused America or Britain of committing genocide against Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Even those who now maintain that the Allied bombing of Dresden and other German cities was morally wrong do not accuse the United States or Britain of having committed genocide. So why is Israel so charged?

Third, during World War II, it was almost universally understood that every German death by the Allies was caused by the Nazi regime, and every Japanese death was caused by the Japanese fascist regime. Had there been no Nazi invasions of European countries and no Japanese bombing of the United States and invasions of myriad Asian countries, there would have been no World War II and therefore no bombing of German and Japanese cities. Likewise, if there were no Hamas and no Oct. 7, there would be no Israeli bombing of Gaza. Every dead Palestinian in Gaza is the result of Hamas' actions.

Fourth, Hamas is responsible for every dead Gazan for another reason: Hamas uses Gazan civilians as human shields.

Fifth, despite far larger mass killings around the world, only Israel is widely charged with genocide.

Since the beginning of this century, the Islamic terror group Boko Haram has murdered more than 60,000 Christians in Nigeria. Not only have there been no left-wing protests, few people even know, let alone care, about it. The Left doesn't care because the perpetrators have been Islamists -- their allies in the fight against the West -- and blacks. The Left cares about dead black people, whether in America or in Africa, only when they are killed by whites.

Same thing with Arabs and/or Muslims: Arabs killed by other Arabs (often the citizens' own governments) or Muslims killed by other Muslims generates zero outrage (even among Arabs and Muslims) and, indeed, zero interest.

In that perspective, notice that Libs Want Dennis Prager's Townhall, along with PJ Media, among (numerous) other media outlets, Charged Under 'Genocide Convention' for daring to Report the Truth About Israel and Hamas.

… Sixth, the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has just revised its child fatality figure in the Gaza war sharply downward. On May 6, it reported more than 14,500 deaths; two days later, it reported 7,797. OCHA also revised downward its figure for women fatalities from more than 9,500 to 4,959. In other words, all the mainstream Western media have reported as truth the lies Hamas announced about the numbers of Gazan women and children killed by Israeli bombs. (However, even the original false figures don't come close to substantiating the genocide charge.)

 … Even if the media give these new numbers the attention it has given the alleged "genocide," it will not end a single anti-Israel demonstration or cause one Israel-hater to cease accusing Israel of genocide. Since the accusation was never based on truth, truth will not end it.

The only genocide in the Israel-Palestinian war is the one Hamas and Iran seek to perpetrate against the Jews of Israel.

Related • To Peacenik Protesters Everywhere (Pro-Palestinian or Other):
The People that Hamas Slaughtered Mercilessly at Israel's Rave — They Are YOU! 

• The Genocide Charge Against Israel: What is
the Difference Between War and Genocide in the First Place?

• "You Have Wiped Israel Off the Map!" Clash on French TV As Pro-Palestine Speaker Tries to Gaslight the Fact that Her Palestine Logo Has Made Israel Vanish

• This war is like few others because the crucial theater is underground; Hamas is often underground, the Israelis are often aboveground, with Hamas seeking to position civilians directly between them 

 • A Gary Varvel cartoon on the current Middle East crisis and the truth about its roots

You can also listen to Dennis on this topic at his fireside chat.

The Real Reason for Secularism: For the Left, the Golden Rule and the 10 Commandments turn out to be a major problem

Over at Instapundit, Sarah Hoyt links to a trifecta of posts on secularism — as well as to her own outstanding In Praise of Populism — to wit, they are Keith Lowery's The Myth of Secular Neutrality, Holly MathNerd's The Disappearance of Secularism, and Francis Turner's Faith and Ritual.

Before we get to the gist of this post (the point here is not to quote all of these remarkable posts, although I would love to), I will do a quick quote from Keith Lowery's article:

The point is to psychologically condition Americans until they believe that they cannot afford to exercise their civil rights. From Jack Phillips to Donald Trump, the law-fare being run by progressives is less about winning those cases than about publicizing the cases so that other non-progressives will think twice before exercising their own civil rights, or doing anything that has a practical political impact that is negative for progressives. 

 … So the cost of exercising any actual civil rights, those which run afoul of progressive goals, is being intentionally inflated beyond all affordability. Progressives know exactly what they are doing.

The radical partisanship of the government bureaucracy, brazenly on display in 2020, unmasked the ideal of secular neutrality to reveal only a delusion.

The point of the present post is one part of my January article on the 2020 Election, and below I have expanded upon that passage.

But first, Sarah Hoyt (and thanks for the Instalink): Nancy Pelosi's

opponent is an idiot — and not an American — by saying that Trump should have “Accepted” the election results. I’ll assume he doesn’t understand mathematics or didn’t watch the results come in. NO ONE should accept impossible results that almost guarantee an election was tampered with. That’s known as disenfranchising the people, and any American should be revolted at the idea. There’s nothing sacred against election results. If there’s sufficient reason to SUSPECT let alone prove tampering, they should be examined, investigated and dissected. Which always happened till 2020. In 2020 the results were untouchable because they couldn’t stand examination. In the same way her opponent seems to only know the “made for TV” bs about January 6th. Taking a guided tour of the capitol is no insurrection, and no one should feel they have to bow to little Nancy’s insanity on that.

• Expanded from American Thinker's Let's Stop Using the Words "Trump Tried to Overturn the 2020 Election":

When describing the 2020 election, all the left is doing is repeat incessantly — they don't even bother using their usual weasel tactic of referring to (unnamed) experts, although that is implicit — that Trump's claim are "baseless" or "unfounded", if not an outright lie (or "the big lie"), all the while calling us skeptics "conspiracy theorists", without ever giving, at least once in a while, some evidence thereof.

Just presenting one in-depth single article or news story in which every one of Trump's claims is meticulously picked apart and debunked might be enough, and the New York Times and the Washington Post could refer to it by linking the word "baseless" or "lie" in every every other subsequent news story to it.  But that "ur-article" does not seem to exist in any editorial office. 

As Dennis Prager puts it, in today's America (and world),

all you have to say to people who went to college is "Experts say" … As I've said for years, for the secular college graduate, "Experts say" is what "Thus sayeth the Lord" has been to religious people for thousands of years.  They have just exchanged authority from the Lord to "the experts"…

In this case, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN don't even use "experts say", knowing that that would sound ridiculous (who on Earth — what individual — can be called an unassailable expert on the matter of election results if there have been shenanigans which by definition are stealthy and which the so-called expert cannot possibly know anything about) while betting — incredibly, with no lack of success — on nobody challenging their basic gaslighting about Trump's "baseless" claims and his desire to "overturn" an election and, indeed, democracy itself.

I'm not very religious myself, but if you read the books in Dennis Prager's Rational Bible series ("The title of [these five commentaries] is “The Rational Bible” because its approach is entirely reason-based … The reader is never asked to accept anything on faith alone"), you will get an idea of the real reason why religion has such a bad reputation. What does it mean to be religious? Does it mean believing in (alleged) fairy tales or going to Church/Synagogue with foolish believers with silly smiles on their faces?

It means nothing but this, says Dennis Prager: live and work (and… govern) while trying to integrate the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments into your life. Now, before you protest that you don't want, or need, a religious lesson: think of "do not steal" and "do not kill" (do not murder in the original Hebrew); isn't that pretty good governance for a society that even an atheist can, without renouncing his atheism or agnosticism and without joining any religion, subscribe to?!

Ah, but there's the rub: to the leftist, actually, the 10 Commandments turn out to be one heck of a major problem.

Leftists at the head of a nanny government obviously don't think you are their equals, socialists do not believe in "do not covet" (taxes), communists do not believe in "do not kill", nanny governments do not believe in "honoring your father and mother" (your family) — certainly not above Big Brother — and above all, all of the above do not believe in "Do not bear false witness."

(If you protest, "Let's not get carried away, Erik, surely you cannot deny that some amount of taxes are necessary in life?!", Harry Jaffa provides the answer: "Those who live under the law have an equal right in the making of the law, [while] those who make the law have a corresponding duty to live under the law." Incidentally, this also pertains to the January 6 kerfuffle…)

Bearing false witness: leftists allow themselves to lie to others, and they allow themselves to lie to themselves — all to bask in their own valor and glory, as these knights in shining armor turn everything upside down.

Because they are Drama Queens, leftists allow themselves to wield double standards and to lie about global warming, about the rise of the oceans, about Republicans being Hitler, about leftist riots versus right-wing protests, about illegal immigrants and how they have no papers, about racism, about COVID, about 1776 replaced with 1619, about American culture (structural racism), about sexism, about rape culture, about men identifying as girls participating in women's sports, about suicide being a benevolent thing ("Do not kill" applies also to yourself), about the horrendous (Bible-based) Western civilization, about the ghastly sins of despicable Republicans like Donald Trump, George W Bush, and Ronald Reagan vs the "ho-hum" at-best-insignificant lapses of valorous Democrats like Joe Biden, Barack Obama and the Clintons, about how the MAGA movement is traitorous, about how the January 6 protesters deserve up to two dozen years in prison while releasing true criminals onto the streets, about how the communists were honorable ("sure they killed millions of people, but, hey, they had good intentions"), and about wokeness uncovering a true picture of society.

In short, they can lie about how despicable their neighbors are and how valorous they themselves are to attack said neighbors, aka their (non-threatening) adversaries.

Speaking of the Bible, incidentally, does it not mention false pride as the cardinal sin? Wouldn't that cover yourself self-describing as valorous for "saving the planet" and "saving democracy"?

No wonder leftists praise l'état laïc and want the Judeo-Christian religion to have nothing to do with politics…

It also explains the antisemitism and anti-Americanism through the centuries and the millennia, Israel and the United States being the two nations that have most followed the precepts of the Judeo-Christian Bible, not least the Golden Rule (and have prospered as a consequence) — and thus at least tried to prevent politicians and citizens alike from lying to others as well as to themselves. This brings us, full circle, back to Dennis Prager, writing (in Whites Aren't Hated for Slavery but for Making America and the West),

the left … hates America, which it regards as the paragon of capitalism. By becoming the most successful country in history, America, the quintessential capitalist country, remains a living rebuke to everything the left stands for. If America can be brought down, every left-wing egalitarian dream can be realized. … What the left does very much seek is to destroy America as we have known it -- the capitalist and Judeo-Christian enclave of personal freedom.

Mark Levin's latest book is called The Democrat Party Hates America.  The truth, as we have seen with the Woke movement, is that leftist scholars and activists hate American institutions, the Left hates American values, leftists hate American history, leftists hate American liberty, leftists abhor the Judeo-Christian religion (because of its Golden Rule and its Ten Commandments), and Democrats have hated Republicans since the movement was born in 1854.

Parkinson’s Swedish Law

As battles rage in America regarding the rise of the minimum wage, a letter to the editor of The Economist contains good advice (indirectly) from C. Northcote Parkinson:

Parkinson’s Swedish Law

Bartleby’s column on pointless tasks mentioned Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill the time available [June 2nd, 2018]. C. Northcote Parkinson invented another, not-quite-so-famous law when he gave a speech to the Swedish Employers’ Confederation in 1980.

“Aim at prosperity and employment will follow.
Aim at employment and you will get anything but prosperity.”

That is still good advice for parties trying to combat unemployment. Parkinson called it his Swedish Law.

CARL-JOHAN WESTHOLM
Uppsala, Sweden

 

This war is like few others because the crucial theater is underground; Hamas is often underground, the Israelis are often aboveground, with Hamas seeking to position civilians directly between them

Perhaps you have seen a pro-Hamas meme on Facebook or elsewhere on the internet, with two photos comparing ruins in some Ukraine city with ruins in Gaza, the latter being far more extensive, and accompanied by some anti-Israeli question or comment.

Something of that nature (Shalom to Sarah Hoyt) leads David Brooks to ask the following question in the New York Times: What Would You Have Israel Do to Defend Itself?

There seems to be a broad consensus atop the Democratic Party about the war in Gaza, structured around two propositions. First, after the attacks of Oct. 7, Israel has the right to defend itself and defeat Hamas. Second, the way Israel is doing this is “over the top,” in President Biden’s words. The vast numbers of dead and starving children are gut wrenching, the devastation is overwhelming, and it’s hard not to see it all as indiscriminate.

Which leads to an obvious question: If the current Israeli military approach is inhumane, what’s the alternative? Is there a better military strategy Israel can use to defeat Hamas without a civilian blood bath? In recent weeks, I’ve been talking with security and urban warfare experts and others studying Israel’s approach to the conflict and scouring foreign policy and security journals in search of such ideas.

The thorniest reality that comes up is that this war is like few others because the crucial theater is underground. … The current Israeli estimates range from 350 to about 500 miles of tunnels. The tunnel network, according to Israel, is where Hamas lives, holds hostages, stores weapons, builds missiles and moves from place to place. By some Israeli estimates, building these tunnels cost the Gazan people about a billion dollars, which could have gone to building schools and starting companies.

Hamas built many of its most important military and strategic facilities under hospitals, schools and so on. Its server farm, for example, was built under the offices of the U.N. relief agency in Gaza City, according to the Israeli military.

 … in this war, Hamas is often underground, the Israelis are often aboveground, and Hamas seeks to position civilians directly between them. As Barry Posen, a professor at the security studies program at M.I.T., has written, Hamas’s strategy could be “described as ‘human camouflage’ and more ruthlessly as ‘human ammunition.’” Hamas’s goal is to maximize the number of Palestinians who die and in that way build international pressure until Israel is forced to end the war before Hamas is wiped out. Hamas’s survival depends on support in the court of international opinion and on making this war as bloody as possible for civilians, until Israel relents.

  … In part because of the tunnels, Israel has caused more destruction in Gaza than Syria did in Aleppo and more than Russia did in Mariupol, according to an Associated Press analysis.

 … John Spencer is the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, served two tours in Iraq and has made two visits to Gaza during the current war to observe operations there. He told me that Israel has done far more to protect civilians than the United States did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Related • To Peacenik Protesters Everywhere (Pro-Palestinian or Other):
The People that Hamas Slaughtered Mercilessly at Israel's Rave — They Are YOU! 

• The Genocide Charge Against Israel: What is
the Difference Between War and Genocide in the First Place?

• "You Have Wiped Israel Off the Map!" Clash on French TV As Pro-Palestine Speaker Tries to Gaslight the Fact that Her Palestine Logo Has Made Israel Vanish 

• A Gary Varvel cartoon on the current Middle East crisis and the truth about its roots