Property-Rights Obliterator Cyril Ramaphosa Is A New Party Boss In The Dominant-Party State Of South Africa. No Reason To Party.

Africa, Communism, History, Private Property, South-Africa

“A disastrous president is shown the door. Now for the clean-up,” writes one of the otherwise intelligent generic writers at The Economist. (These excellent, humble journalists omit the names on their always-edifying reports.) This Pollyanna-like pablum is in the February 17 issue.

Enough of the ahistoric deception! “In Africa, You Oust A Tyrant, But Not Tyranny:”

Nobody with a modicum of cerebral agility should see in the new South-African Strong Man, union boss-cum-tycoon Cyril Ramaphosa, a significant change of the guard. There’s a reason Ramaphosa riles crowds at a South African Communist Party rally just as easily as he excites the head of Goldman Sachs’s South Africa office. (For a clue, ask yourselves how a union boss becomes a tycoon.)
Yet in the tradition of dimming debate, the chattering class has reduced systemic corruption in South Africa and near collapse in Zimbabwe, respectively, to the shenanigans of two men: Jacob Zuma and Robert Mugabe. …

By the way, Cyril Ramaphosa’s promise of “land redistribution through expropriation without compensation” is also the ANC’s vow in 1994. Now he is delivering, as fools continue to celebrate the crowning of a billionaire and an ex-union thug (Ramaphosa).

Boldly libertarian, but doable, the solutions are in “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.”

… READ: “A New Party Boss In South Africa Is No Reason To Party” is now on Townhall.com.

Or the version for nerds: “In Africa, You Oust A Tyrant, But Not Tyranny.”

UPDATED (4/5/018): Jews Must Never Forget Trump For Remembering Our Unforgettable Jerusalem

Christianity, Donald Trump, Hebrew Testament, History, Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East, Private Property, Religion

NEW COLUMN: “Jews Must Never Forget Trump For Remembering Our Unforgettable Jerusalem” is the new column, now on Townhall.com.

An excerpt:

…. A quick quiz: What does “unoccupied” or “liberated” Palestinian land look like? Answer: Like Gaza.

Gaza serves as a sufficiently strong precedent against the folly of ceding territory to Islam. (With the exception of the long-suffering Kurds, what Muslim nation has recently made good on territory gained or on self-determination won?)

Gaza was “returned” to the Palestinians, who promptly destroyed the hothouses Israelis had built there, and planted in the ground Qassam rocket launchers, instead. Gaza now hothouses Hamasniks. In all, granting statehood to their nihilistic neighbors has been pretty thankless for Israelis.

But what of Palestinian families who’ve resided in The City for generations? This the libertarian must address.

The question of generational attachment to place and title in property is simple to solve if intentions are good.

Of course Palestinians should retain their properties.

An historical, national Jewish right to the city of Jerusalem does not extinguish the property rights of individual Arab homesteaders acquired over the years.

Muslims residing in East Jerusalem must just learn to extend to their Jewish neighbors the courtesy their Muslim brethren receive from their Jewish neighbors, in Israel proper.

In other words, allow Jews to live in peace. Or, just live.

Faith and the facts of history notwithstanding, Jerusalem undivided as the capital of the Jewish State is what Christians should be praying for if they value celebrating future Easter Holy Weeks in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, located in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The current pontiff is not Pope Benedict, who was—still is—a brave and brilliant scholar.

Pope Francis is likely more familiar with Quranic verses than with Psalms 137:5, in which the exiled Jews likened forgetting Jerusalem to forgetting the function of one’s right hand. (Literally translated, it is a vow: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.”)

That was in 607 BC (Before Christ), and we Jews have still not forgotten. …

… READ THE REST. THE Complete column, “Jews Must Never Forget Trump For Remembering Our Unforgettable Jerusalem,” is now on Townhall.com.

Pope:

What did you expect from #PopeFrancis? He is an avowed #Marxist. Marxists don't believe in God, much less in an afterlife. https://t.co/K8fsgNOLVT https://t.co/K8fsgNOLVT

— Ilana Mercer (@IlanaMercer) March 30, 2018

UPDATED (2/22): Townhalls And Discussion About School Shootings, One Constructive (Courtesy of POTUS Trump), Another Destructive (Via CNN)

Crime, Donald Trump, GUNS, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Reason

President Trump made a remarkable effort, EVEN HISTORICAL, hosting and listening to a discussion with victims of school shootings, including students and teachers from Parkland, Florida, as well as victims from the Columbine and Sandy Hook shootings.

Alas, CNN’s “legal analyst,” Jeffrey Toobin, pooh-poohed the event POTUS had held where a large group of school-shootings survivors exchanged views amicably, politely and so much more constructively than on any of CNN’s putrid panels.

3:09 minutes into this segment, a bereaved dad, Andrew Pollack, spoke about daughter Meadow Pollack, shot by “some animal” free to roam. “We should’ve fixed the schools,” roared Pollack. “I’m pissed!” The grieving Mr. Pollack focused the debate considerably. “It is not about gun laws. That is another fight, another battle. Let’s fix the schools and then you guys can battle it out whatever you want. But we need our children safe.”

True. We’ve arrived at a point where guards and metal detectors at the entrance to public venues—schools, amusement parks, concert halls, ballgames—are in order. Like in Israel.

UPDATE (2/22): I clean forgot to mention Darrell Scott, yet another bereaved parent from 1999, who runs a program emphasizing the promotion of connectedness and comity. He pointed out that diversity enforcement increases division and anger.

Conversely, the competing CNN TownHall, also with students, parents, lawmakers—but of a different stripe and temperament—showcased incivility and divisions. Boorish parent Fred Guttenberg berated a patient and stoic Sen. Marco Rubio.

To judge from what the rather mediocre students said at the CNN townhall, their education transmits sentimentality over reason, attitude and mush over canon and curriculum. They’ve been forced-fed a pedagogic diet of pop psychology by female teachers who promote every mythical, politically correct orthodoxy that pervades the Zeitgeist. Their parents were not that different. The apple never falls far from the tree.

With no moderation, if only for maintaining manners, from activist journo Jake Tapper of CNN, the students of Stoneman Douglas High hurled insults at Sen. Rubio and NRA representative Dana Loesch, showing themselves to be simple-minded, yet arrogant, liberals.

Loudmouth Sheriff Israel, of Broward County, was on easy street, surrounded as he was by the social justice warrior students of Stoneman Douglas High. None of these inquiring minds asked the sheriff about his department’s abysmal failures in stopping Nikolas Cruz.

Democratic Parkland congressman Rep. Ted Deutch regaled the predictable crowd with windy, empty, grandstanding. He got louder as the evening progressed and he saw Rubio isolated and Loesch desperately trying to please.

“Trump suggests arming teachers as a solution to increase school safety.”

“Nothing New About Parkland School Massacre. FBI Has Been Criminally Negligent In Almost All Of America’s Major Terrorist Attacks.”

Bill Gates Advocates Higher Taxes, While Famoulsy Using His Charitable Foundation As A Tax Haven Of Sorts

Business, Celebrity, Taxation, Technology

What a so-and-so! Bill Gates, like Messrs. Buffett, Zuckerberg and Musk, shovel their “fortunes into a charitable foundation,” which “has the happy side-effect of reducing tax bills, too—meaning that billionaires’ schemes can leave poorer taxpayers to fill in the gaps in public spending.”—The Economist, “Billionaires and the Falcon Heavy.”

“He’s learned the art of virtue-signaling hypocrisy from his bridge buddy,” mocks investor Clifford Asness.

Microsoft founder and billionaire … Gates says he should pay more in taxes and that the government should require other superwealthy people like him to contribute “significantly higher” amounts.
“I need to pay higher taxes,” Gates, who is worth over $90 billion, said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday.
“I’ve paid more taxes, over $10 billion, than anyone else, but the government should require the people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes,” he said.

“Billionaire Bill Gates says he should pay ‘significantly higher’ taxes.”