Cowardice or Bigotry?

Leah Goldstein is a champion road racing cyclist who was invited to be a keynote speaker at Inspire‘s 8 March International Women’s Day confab in Canada.

Goldstein also is an Israeli Defense Force veteran, having served some 30 years ago. For that heinous crime, she was disinvited from the organization’s confab. Apparently, an “extremely vocal group” took issue with her appearing, much less speaking. Inspire justified its…behavior…with this:

Our focus at INSPIRE has been and will always be to create safe spaces to honor, share, and celebrate the remarkable stories of women and nonbinary individuals[.]

But apparently not all women; only those who suit the whims of Inspire‘s managers. Or the whims of those who cowed Inspire‘s managers into this erasure.

It could be, after all, that those managers aren’t really antisemitic bigots. They could be nothing but abject cowards.

I describe, you decide.

A Progressive-Democrat is Offended

Just before Sunday’s Super Bowl kickoff, Andra Day sang Lift Every Voice and Sing, then Post Malone sang America the Beautiful, and then Reba McEntire sang our national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner.

A Progressive-Democrat Congressman from Tennessee, Steve Cohen, took umbrage that fans stood only for our national anthem and not for Day’s performance.

Very very few stood for “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” The Negro National Anthem. Not a pretty picture of Super Bowl crowd.

It’s entirely appropriate, though, that folks stand only for our national anthem (one exception: it’s traditional for folks to stand for the Hallelujah Chorus from George Frideric Handel’s Messiah). Our anthem, after all, stands for our nation as a whole and symbolizes our national aspirations for unity, our liberty, and our equality of opportunity.

Lift Every Voice and Sing is a very fine song and appropriate in a wide variety of milieus, but its use in this context can only be divisive, singling out one group of Americans as deserving national respect, rather than all of us.

Oh, and no one stood for Malone’s performance, either.

Progressive-Democrats’ faux outrage over every thing that doesn’t suit their veriest whim is getting elderly and tired.

I’ve Written It Before

It bears repeating, though.

The House Education and the Workforce Committee has been trying to get Harvard University to deliver documents relevant to Congress’ investigation into rampant antisemitism on campus. Harvard has been refusing to do so. From that, Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R, NC) wrote a letter to Harvard’s Interim President Dr Alan Garber and to Harvard Corporation’s Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker. Foxx wrote in pertinent part:

Harvard’s responses have been grossly insufficient, and the limited and dilatory nature of its productions is obstructing the Committee’s efforts. If Harvard continues to fail to comply with the Committee’s requests in a timely manner, the Committee will proceed with compulsory process.

No. Harvard’s Garber and Pritzker know already that they’re being dilatory and insufficiently responsive.

Once again: don’t yap. Act. Issue the subpoena with a nearby deadline. Move to cut off Federal funding for the school if they do not comply.

Wrong Reasons

Canada’s reigning government, led by the Liberal Party’s [there’s a misnomer] Justin Trudeau, has “delayed” its plan to kill euthanize its mentally ill population.

[H]ealth officials are slow-walking plans to expand the program, stating there are not enough doctors, specifically psychiatrists, in Canada to evaluate mentally ill people who wish to die, according to the announcement made by Health Minister Mark Holland and Justice Minister Arif Virani.

This is the wrong reason for slowing down the march to killing off the inconveniently mentally ill. The goal remains in place.

Holland went on:

The system needs to be ready, and we need to get it right. It’s clear from the conversations we’ve had that the system is not ready, and we need more time.

There is no right way to kill off the mentally ill. Suicide, assisted or otherwise, may or may not be the right answer for those with the mental capacity to decide that for themselves.  Those who are that mentally ill don’t have the capacity to decide, though, and having third parties decide whether a person should live or die is just state-sanctioned execution by reason of those persons being inconvenient for the state to support or to assist the person’s family to support.

So much for Canada’s erstwhile reputation for being…nice.

Supporting Terrorists

The House passed a bill that expanded bars against PLO officers from entry into the US to include PLO rank and file, and that further expanded those bars to include the terrorists, Hamas. The bill says that anyone who

participated in, planned, financed, afforded material support to, or otherwise facilitated [the October 7 attack on Israel or attacks after that] shall be ineligible for any relief under the immigration laws.
Any alien who carried out, participated in, planned, financed, afforded material support to, or otherwise facilitated any of the attacks against Israel initiated by Hamas beginning on October 7, 2023, is inadmissible[.]

Congresswomen Cori Bush (D, MO) and Rashida Tlaib (D, MI) voted against the bill, while Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D, IL) merely voted “present.” Since the bill passed with 422 ayes, that suggests that even Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) voted for the bill, or that she was absent and did not vote at all.

Bush and Tlaib, with their nays, have plainly stated their support for terrorists and for terrorism.

Tlaib’s rationalization for her terrorist-supporting No vote:

It’s just another GOP messaging bill being used to incite anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim hatred that makes communities like ours unsafe[.]

Bush’s rationalization:

I opposed H.R. 6679 because it is a redundant, empty messaging bill Republicans are using to target immigrants and incite anti-Palestinian hate.
Republicans have ZERO credibility on these issues.

This is those two projecting their own hatred of all things Republican and their disdain for Americans of any political bent or ethnicity, especially those who disagree with them.

This is Tlaib, in particular, displaying her own bigotry and her disdain for American culture: communities like ours. Holding some groups of Americans apart from American culture on the basis of ethnicity, indeed.