The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."
The Fed’s dilemma is that it must crash the economy in order to save the economy from the inflation it created.
After the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve used two
policies to prop up the economy: zero percent interest rates and pumping
newly-created money into the economy through quantitative easing (QE).
Because of 40-year-high inflation, the Fed has recently reversed policy
and is raising its key interest rate target on overnight loans between
banks. The Fed is also doing quantitative tightening (QT, the opposite of QE), and is withdrawing money from the economy.
There
are two ways to do QT: “portfolio runoff” and selling assets. The Fed
is doing only the former, runoff, which entails allowing its assets to
mature and not
reinvesting the proceeds. Beginning in September, the Fed will do
portfolio runoff at a pace of $95B a month, $60B of which will be U.S.
treasuries and $35B will be mortgage-backed securities. That pace works
out to $1.14 trillion in a year. Nothing to sneeze at, but to really
fight inflation could the Fed go faster and take even more money out of
the economy each month?
Rather than relying solely on portfolio runoff of maturing assets, this writer recently suggested that the Fed also sell its assets
prior to maturity in order to speed up the deflating of the money
supply, and perhaps obviate continued interest rate hikes. Just as with
portfolio runoff, the Fed wouldn’t reinvest the proceeds of its sales.
Selling assets presents serious implications concerning prices and
yields.
Reducing the
Fed’s portfolio (balance sheet) through sales is a problem. Back in the
Spring of 2020, during the height of the pandemic, the Fed bought assets
for a time at the furious pace of a trillion dollars a month. Selling
those assets will be more of a problem than was buying them. What if the
Fed tried to sell off its assets as quickly as it bought them in 2020?
When
it sells its assets, the Fed does so in secondary markets where prices
and yields are subject to change. When too much of something is put on
any market at one time, prices tend to fall. In bond markets, when prices fall yields rise.
The trick for the Fed in selling
its assets is to sell them at high prices. The higher the price, the
more money the Fed is sucking out of the money supply, thereby attacking
inflation directly. But there’s another consideration: the relationship
between the secondary market and the primary market.
In
the case of the primary market for U.S. treasuries, they’re sold at
par, or face value; what’s paid at maturity. So the way that that
primary market could compete with its secondary market during times when
the secondary market has better yields than its primary market is to
raise its coupon rates, i.e. the interest rates on its treasuries.
Since interest on treasuries is
an item in the federal budget, low prices for treasuries in the
secondary market is a problem if they result in higher interest rates
for new treasuries. The amount of interest on the federal debt that the
taxpayer is to pay in ten years is already predicted to go up by a factor of three.
The
“trick” for the Fed in selling its assets seems fraught with problems
and dependent on other factors, such as what’s happening in the primary
markets. Were the Fed to sell its assets, it would need to decide which
of them to unload. Would it be wiser to sell its treasuries or its
mortgage-backed securities?
To suck enough money out of the system to defeat inflation, the Fed may need to sell its mortgage-backed securities, or MBS.
The Fed will face a series of political and economic headaches as it
attempts to move away from subsidizing home lending by shrinking its
portfolio of mortgage-backed securities… The Fed's pandemic actions
fueled a housing boom. As it tries to withdraw that support, it could be
bad news for housing.
At Substack, economist Arnold Kling immediately critiqued Irwin. Econlib then ran “Is the Fed Likely to Go Bankrupt?” which is a posting of correspondence from Jeffrey Hummel that analyzes Kling’s article on Irwin:
But if Irwin is correct, his prediction is quite ironic: the very
high inflation that the Fed itself created undermines its ability to
reduce the size of its bloated balance sheet. Still, the Fed could
easily reduce its MBS portfolio slowly, as Irwin points out, by letting
“its holdings shrink” as they mature, and not rolling over the portfolio
with new purchases. Unfortunately, most of its MBS portfolio, an amount
of $2.6 trillion, has a remaining maturity of over 10 years.
That last sentence
points to an additional consideration besides prices and yields, and
that’s maturity dates. With most MBS maturities being a decade in the
future, they’re not currently candidates for portfolio runoff. Were the
Fed to sell such MBS, it would surely affect the market for them.
The
Fed’s dilemma is that it must crash the economy in order to save the
economy from the inflation it created. The Fed could continue to prop up
its false, Potemkin economy, but the pain would be worse down the road.
The
Fed should be more surgical in its tender mercies and localize the pain
by selling its MBS, even if it causes housing to go fallow for a while.
For two decades the Fed has propped up housing. It’s time to withdraw the support and let the industry fend for itself. After all, it was housing that caused the 2008 financial collapse. Given that, should mortgage-backed securities even exist?
If inflation proves to be especially intractable and sticky, the Fed should consider unloading its MSB en masse,
come what may. If it collapses the housing industry, so be it. That
would be better than ballooning up the deficit from the sales of its
treasuries.
On August 26, Chairman Powell warned of yet more economic pain to come,
due to the Fed’s war on inflation. There will be continued hikes of the
fed funds rate. And the reason for the rate hikes is that quantitative
tightening isn’t as easy as quantitative easing.
The answer to a question posed above is: The Fed can’t
sell off its assets as quickly as it bought them in 2020 without
risking havoc. The Fed simply can’t suck money out of the economy as
easily as it can flood the economy with money. Given that, the Fed
should allow all of its maturing assets to undergo portfolio runoff, not put a cap on runoffs of $95B a month.
It’s
easy to change a number, such as an interest rate, it takes a couple
seconds worth of typing. But to change one’s portfolio, one must find
buyers. The Fed did QE for far too long, and it distorted the economy.
It
may be that the Fed has little choice but to keep raising interest
rates, because selling the assets in its balance sheet can be dangerous
and slow. It seems that the Fed’s funny money is easier to create than
to destroy.
If Sweden and Finland do not fight wholeheartedly everyone Erdoğan deems a terrorist, does that mean he will veto their membership?
Erdoğan said that Turkey
would freeze Finland and Sweden's NATO membership bids if the Nordic
countries do not come into line with Turkey's "fight against terrorist
organizations."
That might be a tough task for Finland and Sweden. In 2019,
Erdoğan notoriously called half of Turks (those who do not vote for him)
terrorists. The same year, Erdoğan declared the pro-Kurdish People's
Democracy Party a terrorist entity. In parliamentary elections in June
2015, that party won 13% of the national vote and 80 seats in the
Turkish parliament. Nevertheless, in 2021, Erdoğan stated that the
students who peacefully protested his appointment of a rector to
Boğaziçi University were "terrorists."
If Sweden and Finland do not fight wholeheartedly everyone
Erdoğan deems a terrorist, does that mean he will veto their membership?
Kavala was acquitted on all charges but, as Erdoğan publicly
insists that he is a "traitor," he was not released from prison. Upon
his acquittal, a prosecutor instantly produced a new indictment against
him.
The West should tell Erdoğan it is ISIS, not men like Kavala, that is the terror threat to civilization.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that Turkey
would freeze Finland and Sweden's NATO membership bids if the Nordic
countries do not come into line with Turkey's "fight against terrorist
organizations." That might be a tough task for Finland and Sweden. In
2019, Erdoğan notoriously called half of Turks (those who do not vote
for him) terrorists. (Photo by Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's ideological family
tree is inherently anti-Western-- hence, anti-US and anti-NATO. This
author's most recent article,
"NATO Family Picture in Madrid: This Will Not Be Erdoğan's Last
Blackmail," was posted on July 7. Only 11 days later, on July 18,
Erdoğan said
that Turkey would freeze Finland and Sweden's NATO membership bids if
the Nordic countries do not come into line with Turkey's "fight against
terrorist organizations."
That might be a tough task for Finland and Sweden. In 2019, Erdoğan notoriously called half of Turks (those who do not vote for him) terrorists. The same year, Erdoğan declared
the pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party a terrorist entity. In
parliamentary elections in June 2015, that party won 13% of the national
vote and 80 seats in the Turkish parliament. Nevertheless, in 2021,
Erdoğan stated
that the students who peacefully protested his appointment of a rector
to Boğaziçi University were "terrorists." The Nordics may find it
somewhat difficult to cooperate with Erdoğan and chase 40 million-plus
Turkish terrorists in addition to tens of millions of Kurds living in
Turkey, Iraq, Syria -- and Europe.
On May 17, Erdoğan announced
that Turkey would veto Sweden and Finland's bids for NATO membership,
and accused them of hosting Kurdish (and other) terrorists. Under
pressure from NATO allies, he conditionally removed his veto at the June
29 NATO Summit in Madrid . If Sweden and Finland do not wholeheartedly
fight everyone Erdoğan deems a terrorists, does that mean he will veto their membership?
Take, for instance, the notorious case of Osman Kavala, a millionaire
philanthropist and human rights activist who has been in prison for the
past five years on flimsy charges of sponsoring terrorism and riots
against Erdoğan's government, espionage, and a rich fictional catalogue
of other crimes.
On July 11, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) published its decision regarding Turkey's rigid failure to release Kavala, sentenced to life
in prison in May. The court ruled that Turkey had violated a previous
judgment from the ECHR in the case of Kavala vs Turkey from December
2019 that called for Kavala's release. It is rare for the court to
explicitly reprimand a state for failing to abide by a decision. As it was ministers from the Council of Europe (CoE) who referred the case back to the court in February, the ECHR's decision is seen as moving the CoE a step closer to suspending Turkey as a member, or expelling it as they did Russia after it invaded Ukraine.
Kavala was acquitted on all charges but, as Erdoğan publicly insists
that he is a "traitor," he was not released from prison. Upon his
acquittal, a prosecutor instantly produced a new indictment against him.
If, in this case, Kavala would have escaped the Turkish dungeons and
appeared in Sweden or Finland, Erdoğan would probably insist on his
extradition before he gives the green light to the Nordics joining NATO.
This can be what will happen to anyone Erdoğan might view as a
terrorist who, in fact, is just someone who opposes the Sultan's
Islamist rule.
Erdoğan's calculus has no limits. He refers to the PKK when he is
talking about "Kurdish terrorists." He is right that the PKK's violent
separatist campaign since 1984 has claimed more than 40,000 lives in
Turkey; the victims were both Turks and Kurds. Turkey, the U.S. and
European Union -- including Finland and Sweden -- have officially banned
the PKK for being a terrorist entity. Where is the PKK is legal? In
Erdoğan's "strategic ally," Russia. Any objections to Putin? Not on your
life.
Kavala is not a terrorist. If Erdoğan wants to fight terrorism, he
should not torture a liberal philanthropist by keeping him in solitary
confinement despite his acquittal. Instead, Erdoğan should rethink,
specifically drop, his plans for a new military incursion into Syria --
and not add to Turkey's military build-up in Syria– just to win a
handful more of nationalistic votes in elections next year, on the
assumption that a new military campaign in Syria would earn him critical
votes from nationalist Turks.
There are reports
that Pentagon officials are increasingly concerned about a new Turkish
military invasion in northern Syria and have begun planning for how it
could impact the U.S. fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist
group. The main concern, is that any Turkish military movement into
Syria would draw the U.S. partner, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic
Forces (SDF), away from the battle against ISIS, the officials said.
"We strongly oppose any Turkish operation into northern Syria and have made clear our objections to Turkey," said
Dana Stroul, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East.
"Such an operation puts at risk U.S. forces' coalition campaign against
ISIS and will introduce more violence into Syria."
The West should tell Erdoğan it is ISIS, not men like Kavala, that is the terror threat to civilization.
Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey's leading journalists, was
recently fired from the country's most noted newspaper after 29 years,
for writing in Gatestone what is taking place in Turkey. He is a Fellow
at the Middle East Forum.
The epitome of the Democrat Party’s totalitarian instincts.
Last week’s speech by Joe Biden was the epitome of the Democrat Party’s
totalitarian instincts. Even the banana-republic staging–– two Marines
flanking the president, the lurid blood-red lighting, and a photo of
Biden orating with raised fists––evoked the theatrics beloved by
dictators. The burden of the speech was the dangerous “semi-fascism” of
Donald Trump and his millions of MAGA supporters, which similarly
recalled the “enemies of the state” like Jews, “deviationists,” and
kulaks that typify autocratic regimes, as do the numerous “big lies”
lacing Biden’s rant.
All this has been noted and deservedly criticized by commentators, some
of them even on CNN. But the implications that the Dems and Biden have
violated some venerable norms of “our democracy” were puzzling. For
nearly 60 years the Democrats have been relentlessly moving farther to
the Left and adopting its vicious “any means necessary” tactics for
acquiring and keeping power. All it needed to reach a wider audience
were decades of an educational system corrupted by leftist ideology.
But even before the chaos and degradation of politics in the Sixties got this malignant ball rolling, starting in the late 19th
century Marxism had gained a foothold in our culture and politics.
Progressivism was the political philosophy that was the vehicle of
Marxist assumptions that both ideologies share.
Like Marxism, progressivism favors centralized power, technocratic
control, the perfectibility of people, and the pretensions of “science”
as the means for undermining the Constitution’s limited, balanced, and
divided powers. This constitutional structure is necessitated by a human
nature driven by zero-sum “passions and interests” that need power in
order to be realized. And both ideologies scorned the Founders’
principles of federalism, unalienable human rights, individual freedom,
traditional wisdom, common sense, and civil society.
The Great Depression was the crisis that facilitated FDR’s legislation
that realized many of the progressives’ goals, creating a technocratic
managerial elite that over the following years expanded its power and
scope. Unalienable rights that precede government were challenged by the
new “rights” created by government such as FDR’s “Second Bill of
Rights.” By the postwar period, these innovations had created the
bipartisan political guild who manage the ever-growing federal
Leviathan.
The similarities between Marxism’s and progressivism’s foundational
philosophies created a potential space for Marxists, particularly
cultural Marxists, to flourish in our popular culture and universities.
That influence made a quantum leap in the Sixties, when the New Left
exploded onto the political scene, employing all the usual tactics of
Marxism such as propaganda, violence, and a rhetoric increasingly
vicious and preposterous in its blatant lies.
The results were soon noticeable in our politics. Conservative
politicians and voters were regularly demonized by media and popular
culture with coarse rhetoric and accusations of “racism” and “fascism.”
Richard Nixon was the first to receive this treatment, including a
dubious Watergate scandal some now claim
was partly an FBI operation. Nixon’s constituency, the “Silent
Majority” and “Moral Majority” of traditional Americans, came in for the
same abuse, dismissed as racist and misogynists, repressed religious
bigots itching to burn at the stake feminists, minorities, communists,
and homosexuals.
In the following years this pattern repeated itself with Ronald Reagan
and both Bushes. The increasingly left-leaning Dems and their media PR
firms dismissed Reagan as an “amiable dunce” who carried water for
corporate hegemons, and whose bellicose “evil empire” rhetoric and
“Star-Wars” fantasy weapons would trigger an arms race and ignite
nuclear war with the Soviets.
As for George W. Bush, he had, with the help of the Supreme Court,
“stolen the election” from Al Gore. He was “selected,” the Left cried,
“not elected.” Dems smeared him as “Bushitler,” a draft-dodging,
imbecilic chicken-hawk whose disdain for diplomacy, and inveterate
Islamophobia triggered neo-imperialist “endless wars” in the Middle
East in order to enrich corporations like Haliburton and appropriate the
region’s oil.
The presidency of Barack Obama, another faux “healer” of our divisions,
was predicated on this same old received wisdom about Republicans and
their constituents. He called the latter fearful, repressed “bitter
clingers” to guns and religion, xenophobes lashing out against globalism
and foreigners to compensate for their failure to succeed in the “new
world” economic order. His anointed successor, Hillary Clinton, reprised
this progressive gospel with her “basket of deplorables” dismissal of
her rival Donald Trump’s supporters.
This long Democrat tradition of insult and invective reached its nadir
of vicious absurdity with the unprecedented hatred of Donald Trump and
his supporters, abetted by corrupted federal agencies like the DOJ and
FBI. Biden’s recent speech was the logical conclusion of this long
practice by an increasingly left-wing Democrat Party.
Yet it would be a mistake to think that this political assault is a
violation of some venerable American tradition of political decorum and
norms. From its beginnings in the Revolution, the country has been riven
by conflicts among the various factions created by the Colonies’
complex diversity of settlement patterns, faiths, economic interests,
customs, and mores.
This diversity has created the divisiveness of America’s “factions”
driven by diverse “passions and interests.” Such political behavior, as
Madison wrote, is “sown in the nature of man,” a non-negotiable,
permanent feature of human identity and behavior. Hence it cannot be
eliminated by increasing progress, material improvement, and education.
Moreover, given the diversity of the country, it cannot be regulated or
softened by norms of decorum. “Free men,” Sophocles said, “have free
tongue,” and free speech will reflect the diversity of styles of
speaking.
This melancholy fact of human nature meant that the Constitution’s
highest purpose was to check and balance factions: “Ambition must be set
against ambition,” Madison wrote. The purpose of checks and balances,
divided government, and unalienable rights was to prevent factions from
coalescing into a unit large enough to dominate other factions––just
what we are seeing today with progressive absorption of popular culture,
corporations, government agencies, and educational institutions. And
that dynamic explains the progressive desire to dismantle other
Constitutional guardrails such as state sovereignty, the electoral
college, the equal number of senators, and the integrity of the Supreme
Court by packing it.
So the incendiary, divisive rhetoric of Joe Biden is not the issue.
From a historical perspective, it’s been the norm, from the Loyalists of
the Revolution, to the disorder and political violence that followed
the diverse state governments created during the war; the fierce
conflict between federalists and champions of democracy during the
Constitutional Convention; and the divisive clashes between the first
political parties.
Diversity begets divisiveness, and the latter can be mitigated only by
homogenizing the former into an abstract, unitary “people” with uniform
interests that only a centralized, concentrated federal power can serve.
But given how indelible diversity and individualism are, this reduction
of the diversity of the people will only happened under a tyranny that
monopolizes force and limits freedom.
Complaining about Joe Biden’s intensifying of the Dems’ abusive
rhetoric for the last six decades is belaboring the obvious. What we
need right now from the Republicans and conservatives is a plan of
action for pushing back against not words, but deeds––the ongoing
assault on the Constitution and our unalienable rights that the
progressive Democrats have been waging for over a century, culminating
in the manifest disasters of Biden’s presidency.
This undermining of the Constitution is more serious than the alleged
decline of the “civility” and “decorum” that seldom have existed in our
political history. We have traveled a long way down the road to tyranny,
as the current assaults on the Bill of Rights, and the encroaching
power of federal agencies on civil society and personal autonomy
demonstrate–– as do the bungling and willful malfeasance of the Dems’
policies that have weakened every dimension of our existence.
Bruce Thorntonis a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
A new book exposes their assault on mental health.
Totalitarian Cancel Culture, the bullying trans lobby, and the
race-mongering indoctrination of Critical Race Theorists, among other
leftist assaults on society, have turned daily life into everyday
battlefields for normal Americans who stand in the way of Progressive
social engineering.
Bullies of Woke
documents the serious damage that bellicose leftist activists are
wreaking upon the mental health of our children, who are subjected in
schools and in the culture at large to unrelenting pressure to conform
to, if not actually celebrate, woke ideology. In many cases our children
are literally being bullied to death – committing suicide because they
are unable to handle the aggressive bullying from the fanatical
proponents of Progressive-driven movements such as Critical Race Theory,
transgenderism, and Cancel Culture. Bullies of Woke is
simultaneously a guidebook to the modern woke movement and a call to
action for the silent majority to push back and restore common sense and
bedrock Judeo-Christian values in our homes, our schools, and our
nations in the West.
I asked Ms. Bederman some questions about her new book.
Mark Tapson: Diane,
your book covers a lot of ground and many questions come to mind, but
let me just begin by asking what inspired you to view the left’s
ideological assaults of Cancel Culture, Critical Race Theory, and the
like through the lens of its impact on the West’s mental health?
Diane Bederman:
Mark, as much as I would like to take credit for this idea, a friend
and I were talking about our world today, and we went from discussing
the bullying by Progressives to mental illness. I had previously written
about bullying and mental illness on my blog. And so it began.
I wrote this book to give courage to our parents and grandparents and
our politicians, no matter race, color, creed or sexual orientation, to
fight back and protect our children, our families, our communities and
our countries from the bullying by the new religion of Progressivism and
their apostles of fear. Their constant bullying is destroying Western
culture and affecting the mental well-being of our children that can
last generations.
MT: How are social media “influencers” spreading this culturally-acquired psychosis, as you call it, of wokeness?
DB:
We, the adults in the room, have stood by as our children have moved to
their “screens” to get information. Transgender spokespeople are all
over social media. And they speak to your children in your absence. It’s
akin to letting pedophiles come into the room. They are teaching our
children that one can pick one’s sex. They are sharing their stories!
One tells of her “epiphany” at the age of five! She knew she was a girl.
Or he knew. And his/her parents were thrilled. Who is more ill: the
child or the parents? Hear something enough at an impressionable age,
from people who are “famous” long before your pre-frontal cortex is
developed (at 25) and you will believe. This is culturally-acquired
psychosis.
MT: One of your chapter
headings is “Cancel Culture Cancels Family.” What is the danger that
Cancel Culture poses to the traditional nuclear family?
DB:
The family is the smallest unit of authority in any society. Parents
teach the morals and values of that society to their offspring. Cancel
Culture promotes Marxist theory that the abolition of the family is
essential to promoting communism - as you so succinctly wrote elsewhere
and I shared in the book.
Cancel Culture demeans the work of mothering, the importance of raising
one’s own children. Seems it is more important to go to work and make
widgets than raise children; except we can recall a defective widget but
we cannot recall a “defective” child. It demeans and denigrates
fathers. Look how many children are being raised without a father – as
if fathers had nothing to do with creating a human being. These children
are failing.
If Cancel Culture and Progressive ideology succeeds in tearing apart
the family, our society will fall from the bottom up as diversity,
inclusion and equity destroy us from the top down.
MT: What
is “malignant normality” and what happens to a culture that succumbs to
it? What is an example of it that you can point to in American and the
West today?
DB: I learned this term from
a neighbor who hated Donald Trump. Malignant normality as described by
John Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist at Johns Hopkins University:
“Malignant normality is when a malignant narcissistic leader takes
control of a society and gradually changes reality for everyone.”
Well, reality has certainly changed in America. But not from a man;
rather from an evil ideology that promotes the idea that we are the
object of our fate, not the subject of our destiny. We are at the mercy
of our characteristics and not our character. We are being taught by
this new Progressive Woke agenda that we are either victims or
oppressors based on our skin color. This ideology is diametrically
opposed to the ethic that underpins America: that all people are born
with equal intrinsic value, all life is sacred and we have free will,
what Professor Jason D. Hill calls “moral agency.”
This malignant normality has infiltrated every aspect of our society
from media to government, and most dangerously, education via
industrialized bullying.
Malignant morality takes away our sense of freedom “to be.” And as I
shared in the book, freedom is extremely important for good mental
health. Good mental health is characterized by having personal freedom…
to be free to make good choices for one’s self and others.
MT: Can
you briefly sketch the truth about the “white privileged people” who
have been demonized by Progressive bullies as history’s “victimizers”?
DB:
The attack on white people as privileged is appalling; as if white
people have always been elitist like the monarchy. I shared the stories
of desperate Ukrainians and Irish coming to the New World to escape the
hellish conditions in their home countries where they were treated as
“lesser than.” They arrived on ships that were often referred to as
floating coffins. I shared the story of my father who came on one of
those ships, by himself at the age of twelve. I have no idea how he
managed to get from the Russian/Polish border to Scotland to get a boat
to Canada. He spoke no English. But these are the people whom we call
privileged. I guess they were. They were “privileged” to make it alive
to Canada and America where they had the freedom to work, to make a
living, to provide a home for their children, and to teach them the
miracle of the Judeo/Christian ethic of freedom.
MT: You
write that “we are our stories, our narratives.” What happens to our
civilization when we allow Progressive bullying to cancel our cultural
narratives?
DB: I write about the Bible a
great deal. For those who do not believe in God, the Bible is still a
remarkable book because it teaches us how to be compassionate people in a
compassionate society and by teaching us about the importance of the
individual and the ethics of freedom. Progressive Woke ideology wants us
to destroy the past by removing words from our books, by removing
books, by taking down statues that reflect on the past. If we do not
know our past, how can we move forward into the future? Back to the
Bible. Moses warns the people fourteen times “not to forget.” Our
stories are our collective memory. If we erase the stories that made us
free how will we remain free?
MT: One of
the book’s chapters stresses the urgency for us to develop resilience in
our children. What are a couple of ways we can do that to ensure that
the next generation resists Progressive bullying?
DB:
Bullying leads to anxiety which can fall into depression. Many of us
have had experiences being bullied. I shared mine in the book. Some
children fall into suicide from bullying, especially when it is online,
while others rise above.
To make our children more resilient we must stop the industrialized
bullying taking place in our schools where teachers are indoctrinating
our children with revenge racism: labeling white people as evil. If we
are going to prepare our children to be free in a free society we must
remind them over and over that they are not victims – of their color or
of any other characteristic. We must teach them that no one can take
away their self-esteem, which is taught by doing. And no one can take away their “self,” their soul. No one.
Mark Tapsonis the Shillman Fellow on Popular Culture at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
In its current version, the nomos [organizing principle] trying to seize control in almost all Western societies could be described as "victimism".
"Prepare for the end of
abundance!" This is the message that French President Emmanuel Macron
offered in his first post-holiday pronouncement last month. Though
supposedly addressed at the French people, Macron's lamentation seemed
to have the entire "Western world" in mind.
In its current version, the nomos [organizing principle] trying
to seize control in almost all Western societies could be described as
"victimism".
In victimism the state is seen as a cash machine distributing
money among the victims, while apologizing to them. In the past few
years. Western states, both in Europe and North America, have
distributed countless trillions...
Some philosophers, among them the German Jürgen Habermas, have
tried to give victimism a Christian varnish. In their reading, the
Western world, long after having adopted "secularism", remembers
Christianity as a school of frugality, empathy for the downtrodden and
atonement of sins symbolized by Christ as the ultimate victim.
The trouble with that reading is that it is closer to the Greek
concept of the scapegoat, than to the Christian concept of redeemer.
"Prepare for the end of abundance!" This is the message that
French President Emmanuel Macron offered in his first post-holiday
pronouncement last week. (Photo by Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)
"Prepare for the end of abundance!" This is the message that
French President Emmanuel Macron offered in his first post-holiday
pronouncement last month. Though supposedly addressed at the French
people, Macron's lamentation seemed to have the entire "Western world"
in mind.
According to him the era of easily available capital and seemingly
endless natural resources, notably oil and natural gas, is already over.
The "Western world" must learn to live in a different way.
Though Macron did not use the old cliché about "consumerism"
depleting the planet's resources and causing climate change, it was
clear that he had half an eye on the ecologist hymn-sheet.
Why would the leader of a democracy encourage pessimism, not to say
anguish, exactly at a time that, according to his fanciful analysis, we
are heading for dire straits?
One answer may be found in the setback that Macron's party, a
hodgepodge of groups from across the political spectrum, suffered in the
recent general election, winning only a plurality.
Six years ago, Macron built his surprise success by trying to
de-ideologize French politics and bridging the classical 200-year-old
left-right divide.
What happened in the first five years of Macron's presidency seemed
to confirm his assumption that France was prepared to free itself of
ideology. In that period reds, Communists and socialists of various
shades, became pink while blues, traditional rightist and Gaullist
parties, became turquoise, and blacks, hard right and neo-fascist groups
became grey.
However, the change caused by Macron's "revolution" opened the way
for a new ideology in a society that seems unable to do without an
ideological panoptic. That ideology had been lurking on the sidelines
for decades under different labels, notably environmentalism, ecologysm,
declinism and political correctness or its American version, wokeism.
According to German political theorist Carl Schmidt, every society
needs what he calls a "nomos" the ancient Greek word for the organizing
principle of a society's material and cultural life. That "nomos" could
have a dynamic, even an aggressive, attitude. But it could also reflect
lethargy and even fear of losing freedoms or material means of
subsistence.
In its current version, the nomos trying to seize control in almost all Western societies could be described as "victimism".
According to it, the planet is the victim of mankind's insatiable
appetite for consumption. Mankind itself is the victim of greed which is
bred by capitalism, itself a victim of capricious markets. Women are
victims of men while the youths, forming the majority of the
"underprivileged", are victims of the rich old.
Descendants of former slaves are victims of descendants of former
slave-owners. Those with "alternative life-styles" are victims of those
who stay straitlaced and favor the parson's position.
The search for new religious, social, economic, ethnic and other
victims is endless. Society must be divided into countless slices, each
equal to but at the same time different from all others.
Schmidt's "nomos" was abused by the German Nazis and "Third Way"
advocates as a means of dissolving civil society while the state
devoured the nation before spitting it out in a war.
The new "nomos", on the other hand, seems designed to emasculate the
state into a court jester for a society defined as a coalition of
victims.
Gone are the days when Frederic Bastiat told the French parliament in
the 19th century that a "desacralized state" could become a danger to
freedom. Today, Francois Guizot, who advised the French to "go and get
rich" both materially and culturally, would feel out of place in Paris.
We hear echoes of Adolphe Thier, the man who crushed the Paris
Commune, who told the Parliament that "Easy life isn't good for
everyone!"
Recently on French state TV, there were two journalists boasting
about how they refused to wear neckties and formal suits to interview
Macron and how they refrained from addressing him as "Mr. President,"
supposedly to avenge an older generation of TV reporters who, now cast
as post-factum victims, had to kowtow to presidents De Gaulle,
Mitterrand or Chirac.
Spreading a paradoxical salad-bar, victimist ideology challenges the
concept of individual and equal citizenship in the name of "the people",
an abstraction capable of being misunderstood and misused. Remember the
Nazis' slogan: "You are nothing! Your People is all!" (Du bist nichts,
dein Volk ist alles!)
Saying the same thing, albeit in a pseudo-philosophical formula,
August Comte asserted that "The citizen has only the right to consent,
no other rights!"
In victimism, the state is seen as a cash machine distributing money
among the victims, while apologizing to them. In the past few years.
Western states, both in Europe and North America, have distributed
countless trillions to bolster their shaken legitimacy.
Some philosophers, among them the German Jürgen Habermas, have tried
to give victimism a Christian varnish. In their reading, the Western
world, long after having adopted "secularism", remembers Christianity as
a school of frugality, empathy for the downtrodden and atonement of
sins symbolized by Christ as the ultimate victim.
The trouble with that reading is that it is closer to the Greek
concept of the scapegoat, than to the Christian concept of redeemer.
In the Greek concept, the scapegoat is truly sinful and its sacrifice
cleanses the society. In the Christian concept the redeemer is
innocent, symbolizing his sacrifice as a sign of divine grace.
Victimism is a witches' brew of misunderstood Christianity, a zombie
version of Marxism, eco-fanaticism and bleeding-heart liberalism
espoused by mostly well-intentioned, well-to-do but pessimistic people.
With the mantra "less is better than more", they warn that economic
growth leads to Thanatos or collective suicide.
From now on, perhaps until the end of time, we ought to opt for "no
more growth". The advice is "desire what you have" and "recycle what you
don't want."
Amazingly, civilizations that feared growth, shunned innovation,
favored recycling, and curbed desires, as we see in that great book
"Gilgamesh", were doomed to decline and die.
The good news is that victimism, though stronger than ever in Western
societies, has not succeeded in killing the Western civilization's
fundamental optimism, craving for individual freedom, innovation and
growth.
Macron's real or feigned pessimism could turn out to be a passing cloud.
Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in
Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable
publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987.
This article was originally published by Asharq al-Awsat and is reprinted by kind permission of the author.
As in its response to Munich, Israel is conducting a covert campaign to stop it, including by targeted assassinations. Meanwhile the US and European countries are appeasing the mullahs in Tehran, just as they did with Palestinian terrorists in the 1970s
Prime Minister Golda Meir —
who had been a signatory to Israel's declaration of independence in 1948
— refused to bargain with [the terrorists], branding it blackmail. She
later said: "We have learnt the bitter lesson. One may save a life
immediately only to endanger more lives. Terrorism has to be wiped out."
Meanwhile Berlin offered safe passage and unlimited cash to the terrorists....
Libyan president Muammar Gadaffi had funded the attack at the
behest of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who subsequently denied any
involvement and two years later was feted in a standing ovation at the
United Nations General Assembly.
"We were not engaged in vengeance. What we did was to concretely
prevent in the future. We acted against those who thought that they
would continue to perpetrate acts of terror". — Mossad Chief Zvi Zamir,
in an interview with Yossi Melman, (17 February 2006), Haaretz.
Too often Western nations, despite earlier rejection,
condemnation and sometimes hostility, have eventually been obliged to
follow the lead Israel was first forced to take to protect its people.
American and European responses to jihadist attacks on their own
territory, especially after 9/11, is an example of that. We are at
present living through another example: the Iranian nuclear threat.
Israeli leaders have repeatedly warned that Tehran's nuclear programme
not only represents grave danger to their own country but to the entire
region and to the world. As in its response to Munich, Israel is
conducting a covert campaign to stop it, including by targeted
assassinations. Meanwhile the US and European countries are appeasing
the mullahs in Tehran, just as they did with Palestinian terrorists in
the 1970s, and are on the verge of striking a deal that will pave the
path to an Iranian nuclear capability. This time, ignoring Israeli
warnings will have even more dire and far-reaching consequences.
In memory of: David Berger, Anton Fliegerbauer, Ze'ev Friedman,
Yosef Gutfreund, Eliezer Halfin, Yosef Romano, Amitzur Shapira, Kehat
Shorr, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, Yakov Springer, Moshe Weinberg.
We are at present living through another example: the
Iranian nuclear threat... This time, ignoring Israeli warnings will have
even more dire and far-reaching consequences. Pictured: A burned-out
German Army helicopter photographed on September 7, 1972 at
Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base, after Palestinian terrorists blew it up with
hand grenades the day before, murdering nine Israeli Olympic athletes
whom they held hostage. (Photo by EPU/AFP via Getty Images)
Fifty years ago this week, 5th and 6th September 1972, the
world watched in horror as Jews were again brutally murdered on German
soil, at the Olympics in Munich. Eight Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) terrorists, using the cover name "Black September," tortured and
murdered 11 Israeli athletes, emasculating one of them as he lay dying
in front of his team-mates. They stormed the athletes' accommodation,
killed two immediately and held the remainder hostage, demanding the
release of 234 terrorist prisoners held by Israel. Prime Minister Golda
Meir — who had been a signatory to Israel's declaration of independence
in 1948 — refused to bargain with them, branding it blackmail. She later
said: "We have learnt the bitter lesson. One may save a life
immediately only to endanger more lives. Terrorism has to be wiped out."
Meanwhile Berlin offered safe passage and unlimited cash to the
terrorists, which they turned down. In the chaos of a disastrously
botched German attempt to ambush the killers at the Fürstenfeldbruck
airbase near Munich on 6th September, with hand grenades and bullets the
terrorists butchered the remaining nine athletes in the helicopters
that brought them there, as well as a German policeman. All but three of
the terrorists were killed in the firefight. The IDF special forces
unit Sayeret Matkal (General Staff Reconnaissance Unit) had been poised
to mount a rescue operation, but the German government refused to allow
them into the country and hubristically rejected advice from the chiefs
of Mossad and Shin Bet who had flown in.
They were forced to stand and watch as their fellow Israelis were slaughtered.
The terrorists were armed with weapons smuggled into Germany via
diplomats from Libya, where they had been trained for their murderous
mission. Libyan president Muammar Gadaffi had funded
the attack at the behest of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who subsequently
denied any involvement and two years later was feted in a standing
ovation at the United Nations General Assembly. Mahmoud Abbas, now
president of the Palestinian Authority, was a key player in preparing
the operation. As he flaunts himself on the world stage 50 years later,
Abbas still refuses to express any remorse for the murders he helped
bring about.
Even as the attack unfolded, Avery Brundage, chairman of the
International Olympic Committee (IOC), insisted that the games must go
on. While two Israelis lay dead and nine were held at gunpoint, the
first athletics event of the day began on schedule, with German
precision, at 8.15 am. Brundage only agreed to a suspension 12 hours
after the assault began, and following a brief pause, the sports
proceeded as though nothing had happened. "Incredibly, they're going on
with it," the Los Angeles Timeswrote at the time, "it's almost like having a dance at Dachau" (which was just a few miles away).
Addressing
a memorial service the day after the murders, Brundage, who had
successfully fought against a US boycott of the Nazi Berlin Olympics in
1936 over persecution of Jews, outrageously belittled the murder of the
11 Israelis. A request by the German chancellor to half-mast national
flags at the games was rescinded after Arab countries refused to comply.
The chief of Mossad, Zvi Zamir, who witnessed the massacre, wrote:
"We watched the Israeli athletes, with their hands tied,
flanked by the terrorists, and all in step they marched toward the
helicopters. It was an appalling sight, especially to a Jew on German
soil."
Violent action
against the PLO followed swiftly. Two days after the massacre, on 8th
September, Israeli warplanes bombed ten PLO bases in Syria and Lebanon,
killing up to 200 terrorists and bringing down three Syrian jets that
tried to intercept the strike force. This was followed by a ground
operation, with IDF armour entering Lebanon and killing an estimated 45
PLO terrorists.
A resolution at the UN Security Council on 10th September calling
on Israel to halt its military operations in Syria and Lebanon, while
pointedly making no mention of the Munich massacre, was vetoed by the US
against strong protests from the Soviet Union and China. The Soviet
ambassador remarked that putting the Israeli raids on the same footing
as the events in Munich "would be condoning the aggressive policy of the
Israeli maniacs". Of course the Soviet Union itself had blood on its
hands at Munich, having created the PLO and set it on the path to
terrorism in Europe, funding and supporting attacks.
US ambassador to the UN, George H.W. Bush, said
the resolution ignored realities and "looked to effect not cause". He
went on to say its "silence on the disaster in Munich" invited more
terrorism. Addressing the wider issue of Palestinian violence, he added:
"We seek and support a world in which athletes need not fear assassins
and passengers on planes need not fear hijacking".
Bush's words in New York were well received in Israel, but words were
not enough for a traumatised nation that had just witnessed 11 coffins
leaving Lod airport in a fleet of IDF command cars, and whose distress
had been heightened by the decision to continue with the games, as
though the massacre of Jews in Europe could again be simply brushed
aside. It fell to Golda Meir to convert Bush's words into action: it was
her people who were in the cross-hairs.
For that, the military raids in Syria and Lebanon were not
sufficient. Dealing with the threat from countries in the Middle East
was one thing, confronting terror in Europe something quite different.
Before Munich, Israeli intelligence had repeatedly given European
governments information about terrorist cells and attack plans in their
countries. But as Meir told
the Knesset foreign affairs committee: "We inform them of it once,
twice, three times or five times, and nothing happens". [Quoted in Rise and Kill First,
Ronen Bergman, 2018] European reluctance to act on intelligence and
antagonise Palestinian terrorists and their Arab sponsors had permitted a
wave of deadly attacks. In the previous three years, 16 people had been
killed and wounded in seven terrorist assaults against Israeli and
Jewish targets in West Germany alone.
Faced with inaction in Europe, the Mossad had previously proposed
direct attacks against terrorists on the continent. Meir, committed to
respecting the sovereignty of friendly countries, refused and authorised
action only in Middle Eastern nations that were hostile to Israel. That
all changed with Munich. Six days after the massacre she told the
Knesset:
"At any place where a plot is being laid, where they are
preparing people to murder Jews, Israelis — Jews anywhere — it is there
we are committed to striking them". [Rise and Kill First, Ronen Bergman, 2018]
With those words, Meir launched one of the most successful counter terrorist operations the world has ever seen.
Despite this tough stance, before putting her decision to the
cabinet, Meir had understandably agonised, both on moral and political
grounds. She later said:
"There's no difference between one's killing and making
decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or
even worse."
She was also concerned about the young Israelis she would be sending
into the gravest physical and psychological danger. She knew that if a
man can hunt, he can also be hunted. As she put it: "They sit right in
the jaws of the enemy".
The Mossad had been preparing for such an operation since 1969 and
immediately dispatched targeted killing teams, codenamed "Bayonet", into
Europe. The first of several strikes came less than two months after
Munich, on 16th October in Rome, when the PLO representative in Italy,
Wael Zwaiter, a cousin of Yasser Arafat, was gunned down. Further
killings followed in France, Cyprus, Greece and elsewhere. Executions
were suspended after July 1973, when an innocent man, mistaken for a PLO
terrorist, was killed in Lillehammer, Norway. They resumed in 1978
under Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
Beyond Europe, on 9th April 1973, Operation Spring of Youth, a joint
IDF-Mossad raid in Beirut led by Ehud Barak (who later became prime
minister), killed three senior PLO leaders and around 50 other
terrorists. The next day, Walter Nowak, German ambassador in Beirut,
condemned the assault. Scandalously, just six months after Munich, he
had been meeting
with one of the Black September leaders killed in the IDF raid, Abu
Youssef, himself an organiser of the massacre, to offer the prospect of
creating "a new basis of trust" between the PLO and the German
government. This incident characterises the two approaches: as Germany
was appeasing the terrorists, Israel was eliminating them.
The targeted killings ordered by Golda Meir were intended to stop
terrorist attacks against Israelis being conducted in and from Europe
and not, as is often supposed, in revenge for Munich — most of those
killed were not directly connected to the Olympics massacre. Mossad
Chief Zvi Zamir makes clear: "We were not engaged in vengeance". He goes
on to explain: "What we did was to concretely prevent in the future. We
acted against those who thought that they would continue to perpetrate
acts of terror".
This was about pre-emption and disruption of terrorist attacks
against Israeli citizens in countries where the national authorities had
shown themselves unwilling to act. It was also about deterrence, making
terrorists understand that the price of their actions would be high —
preferably too high. That accounted for the dramatic way some of the
attacks were conducted, including the use of explosives rather than more
clinical means or incidents that could be passed off as accidents. The
Mossad wanted the terrorists to have no doubt why their comrades were
being killed and who was doing it. For political reasons, this had to be
balanced against plausible deniability, a consistent principle of many
Israeli counter-terrorist operations before and since. That went badly
wrong at Lillehammer, where six Mossad operatives were arrested and put
on trial.
The imperative for Israel's targeted killings was again confirmed
less than two months after the Olympics, when a Lufthansa flight from
Beirut to Frankfurt was hijacked by Palestinians demanding the release
of the three terrorists who had survived in Munich. The German
government immediately paid a $9 million ransom and released the men,
who were flown via Zagreb to Libya, where they received a hero's welcome.
The last thing Berlin had wanted was to put these murderers on trial,
with German intelligence warning of further acts of terrorism to force
their release. This turn of events therefore was highly convenient and
some experts, including the chief of Mossad at the time, have accused
the German government of paying the PLO to stage the hijacking to give
cover for release of the terrorists. That version was also confirmed in an interview with the self-confessed leader of the Munich massacre, Abu Daoud.
After they were freed, the head of the German foreign ministry wrote a memo to the chancellor's office saying:
"We should be pleased that the whole thing has calmed down
sufficiently." That reflected a prevalent attitude across Europe then
and later. In 1977, French authorities arrested Abu Daoud, the terrorist
leader. They asked whether Germany wanted him extradited but the
Germans declined. The French government, worried about the potential for
attacks on their own soil as a result of holding him, allowed
Daoud to fly to Algeria a few days later in the face of strong protests
from Israel and the US and praise from the Soviet Union. Until his
death, he boasted about the massacre he had organised.
As well as fear of terrorism, the appeasement of Arab terrorists by
European governments was motivated by worries that too close an
alignment with Israel on security would harm their relations with Arab
countries, jeopardising oil supply and export contracts.
American and European leaders were often critical of Israel's
targeted killing policy, sometimes affecting intelligence sharing as
well as diplomatic and trade relations, and with some accusing Israel of
terrorist tactics. As Golda Meir pointed out:
"The person who threatens with a gun and the person who
defends himself in order to ensure that the gun is not fired at him are
not the same."
After Islamic terrorists started turning their guns on Western
citizens, these "principled" objections necessarily dissolved, with
America and its allies frequently forced to resort to a policy modelled
on Israel's. The US and Britain used intelligence agencies, special
forces, drones and airstrikes to carry out targeted killings of
terrorists including in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Two days after the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, French armed forces,
supported by Britain, launched a wave of airstrikes against Islamic
State bases in Syria, echoing Israel's attacks in Lebanon and Syria in
the days after Munich.
Unsurprisingly, in this changed situation, whenever the Mossad
provided European countries with intelligence about terrorist plans on
their soil they did not have to be told "twice, three times or five
times". With their own citizens now in the cross-hairs, they quickly
took the action they failed to take in the 1970s when Israelis were the
main target.
Too often Western nations, despite earlier rejection, condemnation
and sometimes hostility, have eventually been obliged to follow the lead
Israel was first forced to take to protect its people. American and
European responses to jihadist attacks on their own territory,
especially after 9/11, is an example of that.
We are at present living through another example: the Iranian nuclear
threat. Israeli leaders have repeatedly warned that Tehran's nuclear
programme not only represents grave danger to their own country but to
the entire region and to the world. As in its response to Munich, Israel
is conducting a covert campaign to stop it, including by targeted
assassinations. Meanwhile the US and European countries are appeasing
the mullahs in Tehran, just as they did with Palestinian terrorists in
the 1970s, and are on the verge of striking a deal that will pave the
path to an Iranian nuclear capability. This time, ignoring Israeli
warnings will have even more dire and far-reaching consequences.
Israel's vigorous campaign after Munich was a success. It persuaded
the Arab world that the Mossad could strike wherever and whenever it
liked, instilling fear into the terrorists and forcing them to run and
hide in places where they had previously operated with impunity, and
some moderate Arab governments even pressured
the PLO to halt their attacks. The offensive did not end all Arab
terrorism in Europe against Israelis, and as with counter-terrorist
activities everywhere, there were some seriously adverse consequences.
But the Mossad's actions on the continent and Operation Spring of Youth
in Beirut convinced PLO leader Yasser Arafat to order an end to Black
September attacks on targets outside Israel by the end of 1973. As Meir said:
"We don't thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient".
Munich is sometimes thought of as Israel's 9/11. Fifty years on, the
trauma of the 1972 massacre remains etched deep into the minds of every
Israeli and of many beyond who had watched it unfold with heart-breaking
anguish. No doubt the 11 Israelis who perished at Munich were uppermost
in the minds of those brave men and women who played their individual
parts in the campaign that aimed to prevent a repetition of the horrors
the athletes had faced. In Golda Meir's words at the time:
"Perhaps the day will come when the stories of heroism
and resourcefulness, sacrifice and devotion, of these warriors will be
told in Israel, and generations will recount them to those who follow
them with admiration and pride, as yet another chapter in the heritage
of heroism of our nation".
In memory of:
David Berger
Anton Fliegerbauer
Ze'ev Friedman
Yosef Gutfreund
Eliezer Halfin
Yosef Romano
Amitzur Shapira
Kehat Shorr
Mark Slavin
Andre Spitzer
Yakov Springer
Moshe Weinberg
Colonel Richard Kemp is a former British Army Commander. He
was also head of the international terrorism team in the U.K. Cabinet
Office and is now a writer and speaker on international and military
affairs. He is a Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone
Institute.
Biden's "conservatives are terrorists" speech meets pushback.
During Uncle Joe Biden's dark, divisive address to the
nation last week, in which he repeatedly demonized Trump supporters as
violent threats to democracy, one brave soul threw the President
off-stride by chanting profane truth to power.
But guess what percentage of Dems prefer someone else, anyone else, but Old Joe. . . .
It’s official, maybe: Old Joe Biden has thrown his aviator sunglasses into the ring for the 2024 presidential election. The Independentreported
Tuesday that “President Joe Biden has filed paperwork with the Federal
Election Commission to establish himself as a candidate for re-election
in 2024. A ‘Statement of Organization’ submitted to the FEC on Tuesday
registered ‘Biden for President’ as the principal campaign committee for
candidates Joseph R Biden Jr and Kamala Harris.” As with so very many
things coming out of the Biden White House, however, this filing is
shrouded in confusion and not nearly as straightforward as the Independent suggests.
The larger picture, however, is not at all unclear. If Old Joe is at
least semi-coherent (i.e., in about the condition he is now) and
ambulatory, he will be running again in 2024. Few people seem excited
about the prospect of Dumpster Fire II: Old Joe Fails Again,
and that’s understandable. The only way the Democrats are going to be
able to sell Old Joe again is by saying: “If you keep hitting yourself
on the head with a mallet because it feels so good when you stop, just
imagine how good it will feel if you stop after eight years instead of
just four.”
A whopping 64%
of Democrats would prefer someone else, anyone else, please, anyone but
Old Joe to be the party’s nominee in 2024, but the party of Jefferson
Davis is in a bind: Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong aren’t available, Kamala
Harris is a cackling mess,
and who else is there? Gavin Newsom, who seems to think “Let Me Ruin
America The Way I’ve Ruined California” is a winning slogan? Supermodel Stacey Abrams?
Given the thinness of the Democrat bench, it’s not surprising that Old
Joe, who will turn 82 just weeks after election day 2024, thinks he has
a shot at reelection. After all, the FBI is solidly in his corner, and
they delivered for him once — why can’t they do it again?
Still, with a job approval
rating that makes Jimmy Carter look like Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
it’s easy to see why Democrat leaders aren’t greeting the prospect of Biden: Still More Malarkey in 2024
with enthusiasm. Even if the FBI does its level best, close elections
are the easiest ones to manipulate, and Biden could end up on the short
end of a historic blowout in 2024, one that is beyond the reach of even
the most resourceful fed to salvage for The Big Guy.
That may be the reason for the ambiguity of today’s announcement, or
whatever it is. Biden’s handlers may be treating his sort-of filing to
run again in 2024 as a kind of trial balloon, hoping to gauge what kind
of reaction it gets and maneuver accordingly. But if anyone was hoping
for an outpouring of genuine enthusiasm from anyone beyond Rob Reiner
over the prospect of another Biden basement summer campaign, they’re
certain to be bitterly disappointed. No one was ever really excited
about the prospect of a Biden presidency; he was just in the right place
at the right time and took a nomination that the other Democrat
heavyweights didn’t want against a president whose reelection prospects
looked formidable until the COVID-19 hysteria kicked in.
Biden is, after all, the quintessential Washington insider, selling
the same snake oil he has sold for fifty years now, with an
ever-lengthening record of lies and failure to show for it. But he has
one thing going for him: he appears to be willing to be led by whoever
is pulling his strings, as he indicated yet again a few days ago when he
said:
“I took control. I shouldn’t do that. I’m not allowed to do that.”
Other Democrat hopefuls may not be so sanguine about being puppets for
the people who are really in charge. It is they who may decide to sign
Joe on for another four years.
Today, there are two Americas and two basic ideologies that make up those Americas.
Those holding liberal views and the principles that go with them are
very different from those of us who claim to be conservatives or
libertarians. The contrast between the left and right that make up the
halves of America has never been more pronounced — nor, I would argue,
more hazardous to our country's health. With midterm elections coming
up in just about ten weeks' time, this might be the right moment to
reflect on just how different the two Americas are.
The overarching differences
Let's start with traditional conservatives. By traditional,
I am referring to a set of values that have transcended many
generations. Some of them are love of country, respect for authority
and the rule of law, trust in our institutions, belief in personal
accountability, fidelity to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, trust
in our courts (and juries) to fairly adjudicate the cases before them
and mete out appropriate punishment to the guilty, confidence in our
schools and teachers to educate our children passionately but
objectively, respect for our military service members and law
enforcement organizations for the dangerous jobs they do, and many more,
not the least of which are found in the Christian Ten Commandments.
In
the past, those core values have been the touchstone we would go to
when we were wrestling with a thorny question. Would our opinion track
with our basic values? In short, could we look at ourselves in the
mirror and say, "Yes, that is my belief, and I will defend it because I
am a principled person"?
Today, there are two Americas and two
basic ideologies that make up those Americas. One is rooted in a
steadfast adherence to the values I outlined above, and the other
comprises people who believe that principles are situationally dependent.
What is situational dependency? It simply means that one's
principles may be altered or discarded if certain situations require
it. For instance, a person can believe that life is sacred but that
some lives are more sacred than others, so the principle of protecting
human life can be "modified" in order to selectively apply in specific
situations. Abortion "rights" and the abolition of the death penalty
are two examples.
There is no question in my mind that we are in
the midst of a dangerous cultural civil war and that the battle lines on
many cultural issues have been sharply drawn and the armies conscripted
for service. As is usual with any civil war, there are more than just
two opposing sides. There is a third group that hasn't as yet chosen
sides and will try to "sit out the conflict" and see which side will win
(and will then promptly throw in with the winner).
This group is the real unprincipled
one. Their only allegiance is to expediency, morality be damned. They
are worse than fence-sitters who cannot make up their minds because of
their confusion. Their motives are born of deep and abiding
self-protection and greed. They could not care less about their
neighbors, their community, or their country and have nothing in common
with the brave men who founded our republic or fought for its
independence and freedom for over two centuries. They are the ultimate
carpetbaggers — unscrupulous opportunists who would betray anyone and
anything to feather their own nests.
That doesn't stop many
American politicians from pandering to this group with highly targeted
messages and proposals designed to get their vote. Our president is
doing just that with a plan to "forgive" $300 billion of student debt
and thereby buy himself and his party a few million votes in the
upcoming elections. The same could be said about the open door
policy of the Biden administration when it comes to our southern
border. "Y'all come" is a very different principle from the prevailing
but unenforced immigration laws that have protected the idea and the
reality of a secure American border.
"Which world would you rather
live in?" is the question we must ask ourselves before November
8. Here is a short summary of those two worlds:
The world of the left
The left's world is dominated by, as I've stated, a belief in situational dependency coupled with might makes right. Leftists
eschew actual democracy and fear free speech. They see the forced
imposition of their cultural views as a holy crusade, and if anyone
dares question that crusade's legitimacy, he is summarily banned,
doxxed, deplatformed, ostracized from polite society, vilified, and
fired from his job — or accused of being a white supremacists,
misogynist, homophobe, right-wing extremist, or domestic
terrorist. Leftists have no qualms about offering up the names of the
"opposition" to the media and to municipal, state, or federal
authorities for later prosecution or persecution.
The left's principles are not grounded in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Leftists regard those documents as mere quaint relics
of a bygone past. They are irrelevant in today's world — simply a
reminder of what was a "mistaken quest by a bunch of old white elite men
to preserve the existing power structure." Everything that followed
our victory of American independence was based on racism and disrespect
for the underprivileged and oppression of the downtrodden
masses. Therefore, everything and everyone must be made whole now. Reparations
must be paid. Wrongs must be righted. Capitalism and wealth must be
heavily regulated so that no one can profit too much from his efforts, and it must be fairly or as they say equitably dispersed — given to those in real need.
Children
belong to the State, not to their parents. Terry McAuliffe said as
much during his second gubernatorial campaign in Virginia in 2020, and
school boards have been living out this policy in real time since the
dawn of the pandemic. The government (read: the State) needs to be in
control of your health and has the absolute authority over when an
"emergency" is really an "emergency." It can mandate who gets
vaccinated and which jobs people might hold if they do or do not
comply. It can shut down key industries and ruin our economy if it is
in the government's long-term vested political/cultural/economic
interest, and it has carte blanche to bankrupt millions of families.
Leftists
will reward those who sign on to their ideology with money, position,
and power and have no objection to using racism to combat what they see
as racism toward the "wrong group." They will support gender
self-identification and demand that you use specific words when speaking
to those who self-identify as something other than their biological
sex. They will be merciless in their punishment of all who attempt to
resist by using the First Amendment, and they will take no prisoners in their culture war to remake America.
They
will justify an open border policy by playing on our
heartstrings. ("Oh, those poor immigrants fleeing from their badly
managed countries. They must be given amnesty from our laws and moved
to the front of the citizenship queue.") Should we object, we will be
called out as racists who support oppressing poor brown people. Immigration laws must be set aside, they argue, for "humanitarian" reasons.
Violence,
too, is situationally dependent, and the left's definition of it is
like a floating decimal point in the calculation of the fair application
of the law. Resisters to the "new American order" will be branded as
criminals, while the real criminals who prey upon the defenseless will
not be prosecuted. A case in point is the comparison of those few
arrested (but swiftly released) in the "summer of unrest" on the West
Coast while those "insurrectionists" from the January 6 incursion into
the nation's Capitol Building are still sitting behind bars.
Hypocrisy
fuels the left's culture war. The left relies on the big lie(s) and
billions of dollars in pay-offs from the federal government to keep its
troops and voters in line.
The world of the right
The
right is not blameless when it comes to turning away from its
responsibilities to all Americans, but it is getting better at
recognizing the existing inequities in our regulations, laws, and
system. That said, the world of the right is not situationally
dependent when it comes to its principles. The first principle it
reveres is respect for the rule of law and for adherence to the
Constitution and our Bill of Rights. The second principle forms the
basis for deciding what is consistent with our historical traditional
American values. Those include the even-handed application of a moral
code of fairness in all situations that respects the rights of the
individual and the collective, simultaneously, but which assures that
individual rights are never trumped by an ideological view of the
collective's right of pre-eminence.
Much more can be said of the
right's "worldview" of America in practice, but the glaring difference
between a situationally dependent political ideology and one that is
grounded in the basic precepts of self-governance and individual
expression is unmistakable. Societies live or die by their
principles. They flourish or they rot from their root systems on
up. November 8 gives us another opportunity to choose which soil is
best to grow the fruits of our next American harvest.
Stephan
Helgesen is a retired career U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in 30
countries for 25 years during the Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, and G.W.
Bush administrations. He is the author of twelve books, six of which
are on American politics, and has written over 1,200 articles on
politics, economics, and social trends. He operates a political news
story aggregator website, www.projectpushback.com. He can be reached at stephan@stephanhelgesen.com.
Speaking to an audience obviously gathered to hear his characteristic profundity, the good professor let loose with a two-minute comedy riff that had his listeners convulsed with laughter.
Eminent historian Victor Davis Hanson has built a massive following
among conservatives for his erudite commentary on the politics of the
day. But speaking to an audience obviously gathered to hear his
characteristic profundity, the good professor let loose with a
two-minute comedy riff that had his listeners convulsed with laughter.
The subject: What one had to believe to
believe Jussie Smollett’s story (which was uncritically accepted as
gospel truth by most of the media).
The
“trick” for the Fed in selling its assets seems fraught with problems
and dependent on other factors, such as what’s happening in the primary
markets. Were the Fed to sell its assets, it would need to decide which
of them to unload. Would it be wiser to sell its treasuries or its
mortgage-backed securities?
