Heartwarming moment a woman nearly tackles her soldier to the ground as she takes a flying leap into his arms as he returns home from a long deployment
The exhilarating moment was caught on camera by the Nebraska National Guard as soldiers with Troop C, 1-134th Cavalry Squadron were reunited with their loved ones on the tarmac at the Army Aviation Support Facility in Lincoln ahead of the holidays.
For the woman who spots her soldier among the troops coming off the plane, she can wait no longer, and races at full speed towards her beau.
The soldier barely has time to react and quickly manages to take off his backpack and put it on the ground while bracing himself to catch her in his arms.
The soldier can be seen beaming with delight as she rushed into his arms.
He momentarily loses his balance and is forced to take a couple of steps backwards to prevent himself from toppling.
The heartwarming hug was seen by dozens of soldiers family members, many of whom could be heard cheering as they celebrated the return of their loved ones back on home soil.
The soldier was one of 91 returning from the Middle East in support of Operation Spartan Shield.
The troops deployed last February and have been stationed in various parts of the Middle East but mainly Kuwait, where they performed security operations and training with allied forces.
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What’s driving former lefties to the right?
Michelle Goldberg
In a new essay in the progressive magazine In These Times, writers Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet grapple with the contemporary version of an old phenomenon: erstwhile leftists decamping to the right. There have been plenty of high-profile defectors from the left in recent years, among them comedian [and accused rapist] Russell Brand; environmentalist-turned-conspiracy-theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr; and journalist Matt Taibbi, a onetime scourge of Wall Street, who was recently one of the winners of a $US100,000 prize from the ultraconservative Young America’s Foundation.
What gives this migration political significance, however, are the ordinary people following them, casting off what they view as a censorious liberalism for a movement that doesn’t ask anyone to “do the work” or “check your privilege.” Joyce and Sharlet write, “We, the authors of this article, each count such losses in our own lives, and maybe you do, too: friends you struggle to hold onto despite their growing allegiance to terrifying ideas, and friends you give up on, and friends who have given up on you and the hope you shared together.”
Naomi Klein described similar losses in her great book Doppelgänger, which follows the exploits of one of the most infamous of recent progressive apostates, Naomi Wolf, a former liberal feminist who became an anti-vax influencer and a regular on Steve Bannon’s podcast. “Almost everyone I talk to tells me about people they have lost ‘down the rabbit hole’ — parents, siblings, best friends, as well as formerly trusted intellectuals and commentators,” wrote Klein. “People, once familiar, who have become unrecognisable.”
A key question for the left is why this is happening. For some celebrity defectors, the impetus seems clear enough: They lurched right after a cancellation or public humiliation. Klein writes that a turning point for Wolf was widespread mockery after she was confronted, live on the radio, with evidence that the thesis of the book she was promoting was based on her misreading of archival documents. Brand’s right-wing turn, as Matt Flegenheimer wrote in The New York Times Magazine, coincided with the start of investigations into sexual assault accusations against him. [In September, the 48-year-old was accused of rape, assault and emotional abuse between 2006 and 2013, following claims made against him in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary.] But that doesn’t explain why there’s such an eager audience for born-again reactionaries and why, in much of the Western world, the right has been so much better than the left at harnessing hatred of the status quo.
Part of the answer is probably that the culture of the left is simply less welcoming, especially to the politically unsure, than the right. The conservative movement may revel in cruelty toward out-groups -- see, for example, the ravening digital mobs that descended on podcaster Julia Mazur for a TikTok she made about the pleasures of life without children – but the movement is often good at love-bombing potential recruits. “People go where people accept them, or are nice to them, and away from people who are mean to them,” the Marxist Edwin Aponte, one of the founders of the heterodox but socially conservative magazine Compact, told Joyce and Sharlet.
But I think there’s a deeper problem, which stems from a crisis of faith in the possibility of progress. Liberals and leftists have lots of excellent policy ideas but rarely articulate a plausible vision of the future. I sometimes hear leftists talk about “our collective liberation”, but outside a few specific contexts – the ongoing subjugation of the Palestinians comes to mind – I mostly have no idea what they’re talking about.
It’s easy to see what various parts of the left want to dismantle – capitalism, the carceral state, heteropatriarchy, the nuclear family – and much harder to find a realistic conception of what comes next. Some leftists who lose hope in the possibility of thoroughgoing transformation become liberals like me, mostly resigned to working toward incremental improvements to a dysfunctional society. Others, looking beyond the politics of amelioration, seek new ways to shake up the system.
The right has an advantage in appealing to dislocated and atomised people: It doesn’t have to provide a compelling view of the future. All it needs is a romantic conception of the past, to which it can offer the false promise of return. When people are scared and full of despair, “let’s go back to the way things were” is a potent message, especially for those with memories of happier times.
One common interpretation of the sort of ideological journeys Joyce and Sharlet wrote about for In These Times is “horseshoe theory,” the idea that at the extremes, left and right bend toward each other. But plenty of the people who’ve followed a rightward trajectory were never particularly radical; Wolf was a fairly standard Democrat, as was Elon Musk, now king of the edgelords.
As Klein argues, a better framework is “diagonalism”, coined by scholars William Callison and Quinn Slobodian. Diagonalists, they write, tend to “contest conventional monikers of left and right (while generally arcing toward far-right beliefs),” be ambivalent or cynical about electoral politics, and “blend convictions about holism and even spirituality with a dogged discourse of individual liberties”. At the extreme, they write, “diagonal movements share a conviction that all power is conspiracy. Public power cannot be legitimate, many believe, because the process of choosing governments is itself controlled by the powerful and is de facto illegitimate”.
Such conspiratorial politics have rarely, if ever, led to anything but catastrophe, but that doesn’t lessen their emotional pull. Both Sharlet and Joyce are longtime chroniclers of the right – its ambitions but also its divisions and contradictions. “But in this age of Trump, his presence and his shadow, we’ve witnessed more right-wing factions converging than splitting, putting aside differences and adopting new and ugly dreams,” they write. “They, of course, do not see the dreams as ugly, but beautiful.”
To compete with them, the left needs beautiful dreams of its own.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/what-s-driving-former-lefties-to-the-right-20231217-p5eryu.html
*********************************************Debate over race relations rages in NZ as new government repeals key social policies
No more special privileges for minorities
After just three weeks in office, New Zealand's new Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is being accused of running a "scorch and burn" reform agenda that is responsible for the worst decline in race relations "since the early stages of colonisation".
For a country once lauded for its approach to racial inclusion, New Zealand's new government will now get to work on its 100-day plan against a backdrop of a protest movement that is galvanising and growing in strength.
Māori Party co-leader and member for Te Tai Hauāuru Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told the ABC the government was unwinding policies designed to improve outcomes for Māori and Pasifika people — including making changes Mr Luxon's National Party did not campaign on.
"What we have seen is the government taking us into a decline like we've never seen in race relations, certainly not since the earliest stages of colonisation," she said.
"It's extremely damaging, destructive and extremely concerning."
So far, Mr Luxon's government has announced it will repeal the legislation behind New Zealand's world-leading plan to make smoking tobacco illegal — a change community leaders fear Māori and Pasifika people will "bear the brunt of".
The government has also disbanded the Māori Health Service and minimised the use of Māori language in the public service.
And most controversially, as part of his coalition negotiations, Mr Luxon agreed to indulge the ACT Party in its desire to question the interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand's founding document that underpins claims of Māori sovereignty.
ACT leader David Seymour wants a referendum on the principles of the treaty, and so far Mr Luxon has allowed the idea to go to a committee — something that will fuel a divisive conversation about the recognition and rights of Māori in New Zealand.
Ms Ngarewa-Packer said the National-led government had knowingly "created a new problem" for New Zealand by reigniting the race relations debate with its 100-day plan, something she described as taking a "scorch and burn" approach to current policies.
"It knows that Maori die more of lung cancer, but it has taken away the policy to stop that. It knows that Maori are dying earlier, but it's taken away the Maori Health Authority. It knows that our Maori language is at risk, but it has now removed the language from all government departments," she said.
"It knows that we have never ceded sovereignty — that we are the First Nations people — but now it wants to rewrite and review, and perhaps [hold a] referendum on our treaty, our sovereign documents, so there is a lot at stake."
The prime minister's office did not respond to the ABC's request for comment, but Mr Luxon has repeatedly said that, at this moment, his party only supports taking the idea of a referendum on the treaty to the committee stage.
Several opposition parties have questioned the value of that if he would stop short of supporting a referendum.
There is, of course, a political reality behind the policy agenda.
The governing coalition is made up of Christopher Luxon's National Party, the ACT Party and NZ First.
The ACT Party is led by David Seymour; Winston Peters leads New Zealand First.
Political analysts warned the trio would form a "coalition of chaos" if the electorate did not deliver National and its traditional right-bloc partner, the ACT Party, enough support to govern without NZ First.
In the end, National did need both parties to hold enough seats in the chamber to form government, and that kicked off several weeks of coalition negotiations.
It was more than 40 days after the October 14 election when the three men who lead those parties stood up in Wellington and announced they had reached a three-way coalition agreement — the first in New Zealand's history.
Now, New Zealand is seeing the results of that negotiation coming to pass.
There are always red lines in negotiation, and if the three parties could not come to an agreement, New Zealand would have been forced back to the polls.
It was something everyone wanted to avoid and so compromises had to be made.
David Seymour had previously said he would not sit at a cabinet table with Winston Peters, but he now does.
Before the election, Mr Luxon said it was not a National Party policy to review or redefine the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, but he also flagged it would likely come up in coalition negotiations with the ACT Party.
Mr Seymour is a libertarian, and while he acknowledges the Treaty of Waitangi is a Māori taonga, or treasure, he described its principles as "vague, free-floating ideas for activist judges and officials to divine".
A poll jointly published by lobby group Taxpayers' Union and market researcher Curia in October found 60 per cent of New Zealanders supported ACT's proposal to clarify the definition of the treaty's principles, while 18 per cent opposed it.
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Libertarianism means: do no harm, take no excreta
I am (proudly) a Libertarian. When I tell people this, the responses are diverse:
Libertarian? Like Pete Doherty’s band?
‘No, that’s Libertine.’
Libertarian? Don’t they work with books?
‘No, that’s a librarian.’
I didn’t know I was a Libertarian until a few years ago. What I did know for certain was I was frustrated by government; decisions such as banning smoking in nightclubs and tanning beds seemed unnecessary and a waste of resources, but I was never too impacted by such decisions to make any noise. Until Covid.
Covid signified my great Libertarian awakening and Libertarian epiphany.
To be able to continue to work and provide for my family, my children, I was forced, against my better judgment and will, to be vaccinated.
Where were the feminists chanting about bodily autonomy? I believed their catch-cry ‘my body, my choice’? Until Covid.
Was I auditioning for Harvey Weinstein film? Or was I employed in the Victorian construction industry?
Where were the bleeding-heart lefties (which I had previously identified as) that claimed to care about the working class? A working class that had been unable to work throughout lockdowns, and was now being told they could work, but only if they were vaccinated. It was working class people that took to the streets and protested. It was the working class that was mocked. By the Left. Who abandoned them.
It was amongst the hypocrisy of the left that I found the Libertarians, then known as the Liberal Democrats (now Libertarian Party) – Tim Quilty and the unofficial Victorian Opposition Leader, David Limbrick – who consistently advocated for my rights and freedoms.
So what is a Libertarian?
Libertarians don’t fit in a box. We’re not ‘Left’ or ‘Right’. We sit on a political continuum which at its core is motivated by liberty.
But since the current political climate advocates oversimplification of complex issues (not only do I find this boring, but I believe such ignorance to be unnecessarily polarizing and damaging to community cohesiveness) let’s play the ‘Left’ vs ‘Right’ game where you can try to pigeon-hole Libertarian policies as ‘Left’ or ‘Right’:
Criminal Justice Reform
Lower Taxes
Access to healthcare
Individual Property rights
Equal rights
Entrepreneurship
Small Business
See how Libertarianism doesn’t subscribe to one or the other?
We represent the entrepreneurs working to create their business in the free market without the endless red tape. We are for the recreational cannabis users who want to indulge as they please without fear of criminal charge. We are for small business owners who want their business to flourish, and not be choked out by taxes. We are for families who want to choose the education they think is best for their family and have final say over their children’s wellbeing.
We are a party that advocates the Non-Aggression Principle – anti-war, pro-peace and pro-bodily autonomy.
But most importantly, we are for the people who just want the government to leave them alone. Libertarianism is the epitome of ‘you do you, just don’t hurt anyone’. (Gosh it sounds almost like … tolerance! Not sure if the left remembers what that word means!)
We don’t excuse political leaders for their misdeeds because it’s ‘our guy’ or ‘or team’. We are committed to holding both sides of politics to account in the interests of civil liberties and freedoms.
Once Libertarians seek to be elected, we want to enable you to take control over your own life. Society likes to use the word empowerment, yet how many political leaders and parties do you see advocate for policy and law reform which empowers the individual?
We are seeing these ideals spread around the world with the ACT Party in New Zealand and the new President of Argentina – Javier Milei.
Libertarians want you to be empowered to run your life because only you, the individual, knows what’s best for you. Not an overpaid bureaucrat that lives in the Canberra bubble.
If you want the government to leave you alone, maybe you are a Libertarian too.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/12/the-l-word-do-no-harm-take-no-shit/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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