U.S. President Barack Obama continues to ignore the catastrophic global repercussions of his flawed policies toward the Middle East, where hundreds of thousands of Arabs have been butchered in civil wars and millions displaced from their homes. The situation would have been different had he acted with a modicum of fortitude and leadership in lieu of groveling to rogue states.
But ominously, and counter to most predictions, over the past few weeks the supposedly lame-duck president has signaled a probable intention to launch yet another initiative to pressure Israel to make concessions. This at a time when the Palestinians are engaged in a frenzied campaign of stabbings and other forms of murder of Israeli civilians. And while the Palestinian mullahs and media sanctify the killers as national heroes and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas continues to praise the “martyrs” and provide pensions to their families.
Obama unburdened himself in a lengthy interview with his favored Jewish journalist, Jeffery Goldberg, when he referred to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “one of his deepest disappointments” in the Middle East, being “too fearful and politically paralyzed” to advance the peace process.
This prompted former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren to comment in The Algemeiner: “Really? Netanyahu is one of Obama’s ‘deepest disappointments’ as a Middle East leader? More disappointing than Syrian President [Bashar] Assad? Than former Iranian President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad? Than ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?” I would also add to Oren's list our “peace partner” Abbas, who blesses the blood of those who murder us. Not to mention the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whom Obama has befriended despite his repeated calls for the destruction of Israel.
In the same week, The Wall Street Journal outlined alternative White House initiatives to impose punitive measures on Israel before Obama vacates office. These include a United Nations Security Council resolution to force Israel to make concessions or, even worse, defining the future parameters of an agreement with the Palestinians without consulting Israel or ensuring its basic security needs -- a step that the U.S. had until now repeatedly vetoed.
Obama is also said to be actively encouraging European intervention, such as the French initiative that would endorse recognition of a Palestinian state if negotiations failed. The Wall Street Journal reported that Obama is also contemplating a joint statement exerting pressure on Israel from the Middle East Quartet -- comprising the U.S., U.N., European Union and Russia.
Vice President Joe Biden apparently paved the ground for this during his recent visit to the region when he proposed an initiative based on recognizing east Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital, an end to all settlement activity, Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and Palestinians forfeiting the Arab refugee right of return.
Even setting aside the current PA incitement to murder Israelis, no government could possibly contemplate accepting such proposals, which would dramatically endanger Israel’s security. To implement this would be utterly irresponsible, bearing in mind that in the absence of the Israel Defense Forces, Hamas and/or ISIS are poised to take over the corrupt and despised Palestinian Authority.
However, the Palestinian media has already announced that Abbas rejected Biden’s proposals -- which clearly demonstrates that it is the elimination of Jewish regional sovereignty rather than attaining statehood that motivates the Palestinian leadership.
Strains in the relationship are also evident in the consistently hostile remarks against Jewish settlement even within the neighborhoods and areas of east Jerusalem that are 100% Jewish and will always be retained by Israel. Yet, aside from a vague indirect statement by Biden after a U.S. tourist was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist, the administration has refused to condemn the PA or Abbas for their incitement to kill Jews and sanctifying the murderers as heroes.
On top of this, there appear to be complications in the negotiations of the complex 10-year military aid package and Biden conveyed the message that Israel would not obtain the level of support it sought.
Under these circumstances and bearing in mind how Obama sandbagged him on his last visit, it is not surprising that Netanyahu is now reluctant to meet with the U.S. president. Contrary to U.S. administration press leaks, the White House was informed that Netanyahu is unlikely to come at this time to Washington, even if the pretext that he would be accused of intervening in the elections, was flimsy.
These tensions with the U.S. are concomitant with the enormous pressure that is building up against Israel in Europe and at other international levels.
This is also at a time when anti-Semitism -- often expressed as anti-Israelism -- in Europe and elsewhere has assumed tsunami levels. It is burgeoning at universities, including campuses in the U.S. that have witnessed acts of anti-Semitic incitement and violence that have impacted heavily and for the first time even traumatized some American Jewish students. This has been aggravated by the fact that a number of alienated Jews have been promoted to the forefront of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and other anti-Israel campaigns.
Over the next year, Israel and the Jewish people may well be facing the greatest challenges since the Yom Kippur War. The chaos associated with the U.S. elections only further complicates the issue.
One of the most frequent propaganda tactics employed against Israel is the false allegation that the barrier to a peace settlement is the fact that Israel is currently governed by the most right-wing government in its history. That Netanyahu has compromised far beyond the red lines drawn by the late Yitzhak Rabin, who is currently portrayed by the left as the man of peace, is conveniently ignored.
Likewise, the international community does not appreciate that despite major differences concerning domestic social, economic and religious issues, each of the Zionist opposition parties, if empowered, would assume basically similar foreign and security policies to the current government. The overwhelming majority of the nation opposes annexation of the territories and remains committed to separating themselves from the Palestinians. However, there is broad consensus across all the Zionist political parties that, so long as the current Palestinian hatred and regional turmoil prevails, an independent Palestinian state cannot be contemplated.
A display of unity would go a long way toward defanging much of the poison of our adversaries, who allege that Israel’s foreign policy is a product of right-wing extremists.
It would also provide a major impetus for Diaspora Jewry to act more courageously and decisively. In addition, it would neutralize the haredi extremists threatening to bring down the government over issues such as access of non-Orthodox groups to the Western Wall or mikvehs, which would lead to further erosion of ties between Israel and American Jews in the midst of this crisis.
I have repeatedly maintained that there is a dire need for a broad unity government during these critical times. MKs Isaac Herzog, Yair Lapid and other opposition politicians provide fuel for our enemies by castigating the government. They would have a tremendous positive global impact were they to act responsibly and alter their approach, making it clear that the nation is united in its refusal to make further concessions that could undermine Israel’s security. Surely leaders of the principal opposition Zionist parties could temporarily maintain the status quo on domestic issues, suspend their parochial personal ambitions and agree to unite and confront our adversaries as a united people.
Besides, political leaders demonstrating a willingness to set aside short-term political advantage in order to promote the national interest would be acting in accordance with the desire of most Israelis and would gain considerable standing and support from the public if they behaved in this manner. In our dysfunctional political system, accountability to the electorate is minimal. But under the present circumstances, public pressure could have an impact.
History will judge harshly and condemn those political leaders who, despite a virtual consensus, refuse to act in what is clearly the national interest.
Now is the time for our political leaders to stand up and be counted.
2a) Iran’s U.N. Free Pass
Russia blocks sanctions against Tehran for its ballistic-missile tests.
The Obama Administration made many promises about its nuclear deal with Iran, and this week we’ve learned that another one turns out to be false. Sanctioning Iran for violating its commitments really does depend on the acquiescence of those famously good global citizens, Russia and China.
That’s the lesson from Russia’s refusal to go along with U.S. pressure to sanction Iran for its latest ballistic-missile tests. The Islamic Republic test-fired at least two missiles this month with ranges of some 1,200 miles and a payload capacity of up to one ton, which is more than enough to deliver a nuclear warhead. That’s an apparent violation of Security Council Resolution 2231, agreed last year in connection to the deal, which “called upon” Iran not to build or test nuclear-capable missiles for eight years.
Iran never had any intention of honoring the resolution, and Moscow—which is in talks to sell Iran as much as $8 billion in advanced weapons—has no intention of enforcing it. “A call is different from a ban so legally you cannot violate a call,” Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., explained this week. Russia wields a veto on the Security Council, so Administration cajoling is futile.
Such resistance makes nonsense of Administration promises that it didn’t need Russia’s cooperation to restore sanctions if Tehran cheats. “Snapback sanctions” was one of the main slogans by which wavering Democrats like New York’s Kristen Gillibrand were won over during last summer’s congressional debates. Another slogan—“unprecedented verification”—amounted to a brief, one-time visit by U.N. inspectors to Iran’s military site at Parchin.
![clip_image002]( "clip_image002") It would be nice to think the next U.S. President could walk away from an agreement that Iran won’t honor and we cannot enforce. But it would take years to restore the global sanctions regime to what it was before the deal. Don’t expect Iran’s nuclear and missile programs to remain frozen in the meantime.
2b) Dangerous Illusions About Iran
By Elliott Abrams
Last year’s Iran nuclear agreement was sold with several powerful arguments, and among the most important were these: that the agreement would strengthen Iranian “moderates” and thus Iran’s external conduct, and that it would allow us unparalleled insight into Iran’s nuclear program.
Both are now proving to be untrue, but the handling of the two differs. The “moderation” argument is being proved wrong but the evidence is simply being denied. The “knowledge” argument is being proved wrong but the fact is being met with silence. Let’s review the bidding.
The idea that the nuclear agreement was a reward for Iran’s “moderates” and would strengthen them is a key tenet of the defense of the agreement. If Iran remains the bellicose and repressive theocracy of today when the agreement ends and Iran is free to build nukes without limits, we have entered a dangerous bargain. It is critical that Iran change, so defenders of the agreement adduce evidence that it has. And the new evidence is Iran’s recent elections. Those elections were a great victory for “moderates” and hard-liners, it is said, and they help to prove that the nuclear deal was wise.
The problem here is that those elections were anything but a victory for Iran’s reformers. As Mehdi Khalaji wrote about the Assembly of Experts election, “if one understands ‘reformist’ as a political figure who emerged during the reform movement of the late 1990s and is associated with the parties and groups created at that time, then neither the candidates on the ‘reformist’ list nor the winners of Tehran’s sixteen assembly seats can credibly be called by that name.” To take one of the examples Khalaji cites, Mahmoud Alavi ran on what has been called a reformist ticket but he “is the current intelligence minister, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed him as head of the military’s Ideological-Political Organization from 2000 to 2009.” Khalaji concludes that “no new prominent reformists won seats, and the proportion of hardliners remained the same.”
Ray Takeyh and Reuel Gerecht draw a stark conclusion: this year’s elections “spelled the end of Iran’s once-vivacious reform movement….” which has simply been crushed by the regime. “The electoral cycle began with the usual mass disqualification of reformers and independent-minded politicians,” they remind us. I’d cite another fact: that reformers of past election years, presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, have remained under house arrest for five years now, during the entire Rouhani presidency, demonstrating the true fate of reformers of even a mild variety.
What’s the point of the “reformist” charade? As Takeyh and Gerecht note, “Foreigners don’t have to confess that they are investing in an increasingly conservative and increasingly strong theocracy; rather, they are aiding ‘moderates’ at the expense of hardliners.” But this charade has in fact worked well, producing headline after headline in the Western media about “reformist” victories. You can fool most of the people some of the time, or at least most of the people who have a strong desire to be fooled–because they wish to protect the nuclear deal and its authors.
Iran’s conduct certainly suggests radicalization rather than moderation, and the past weeks have seen repeated ballistic missile tests. Ballistic missiles are not built and perfected in order to carry 500 pound “dumb” bombs; they are used to carry nuclear weapons. So Iran’s continued work on them suggests that it has never given up its nuclear ambitions, not even briefly for the sake of appearances. The American response has been anemic, even pathetic; we threaten to raise the issue at the United Nations. Two missiles were test-fired today, with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out” written on them. These tests violate UN Security Council resolutions, but the American reaction is cautious: a speech, a debate in New York, perhaps some sanctions, but nothing that could possibly lead Iran to undo the nuclear deal. Because Iran knows that this will be the Obama administration’s reaction, expect more and more ballistic missile tests. Expect more conduct like the interception, capture, and humiliation of American sailors in the Gulf. Expect more Iranian military action throughout the region.
The head of CENTCOM, Gen. Lloyd Austin, put it this way: “we see malign activity, not only throughout the region, but around the globe as well…..We’ve not yet seen any indication that they intend to pursue a different path. The fact remains that Iran today is a significant destabilizing force in the region….Some of the behavior that we’ve seen from Iran of late is certainly not the behavior that you would expect to see from a nation that wants to be taken seriously as a respected member of the international community.”
Are we now, to turn to the second matter, gaining unparalleled insight into the Iranian nuclear program? Is this one of the achievements of the agreement? On the contrary, it seems. As the AP put it, “the four Western countries that negotiated with Iran — the U.S., Britain, France and Germany — prefer more details than were evident in last month’s first post-deal [IAEA] report. In contrast, the other two countries — Russia and China — consider the new report balanced, while Iran complains the report is too in-depth. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano feels he has struck the right balance, considering Iran is no longer in violation of U.N. and agency demands to curb its nuclear program. His report was much less detailed than pre-nuclear deal summaries….”
Much less detailed? Sure, because the UN Security Council resolutions under which the IAEA provided the detail, are gone, wiped out by the nuclear deal. The IAEA’s February 26 report was its first since the nuclear deal went into effect, and lacked details on matters such as uranium stockpiles, production of certain centrifuge parts, and progress by Iran toward meeting safeguard obligations. The Obama administration has wavered, sometimes saying there was enough detail, but then demanding more. The deal was sold, in part, as a way of providing transparency, but that does not appear to be accurate: it may in fact legitimize opacity. Earlier this week came a remarkable exchange between a reporter and State Department spokesman John Kirby, who defended the degree of knowledge we have.
Kirby said “So we now know more than we’ve ever known, thanks to this deal, about Iran’s program.” The reporter, Matt Lee of AP, asked “”How much near-20 highly percent enriched uranium does Iran now have?” Kirby replied “I don’t know.” To which Lee noted “You don’t know because it’s not in the IAEA report.”
So, the bases on which the nuclear agreement with Iran was sold appear to be crumbling. Moderates are not gaining power, Iran is not moderating its behavior, and we know less rather than more about what it is actually doing in its nuclear program. Some of those conclusions are denied by the administration and by credulous portions of the press, and others are ignored. But all those verbal games will not make us any safer.
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3)
Education, the Great Equalizer
By Allen West
This past weekend I had an incredible experience. I walked upon the hallowed grounds of Hillsdale College in Michigan. Here I was, a fifty-five year old black conservative from the inner city of Atlanta, Georgia, delivering an address at the “Citadel of Conservatism.” The theme I was given to address was “God and Country.” I used that topic to delineate between the divine rights theory and natural law. I discussed how John Locke, the classical liberal political theorist, developed the individual rights of life, liberty, and property – and how today in America the ideals of natural law, and our Judeo-Christian faith heritage are threatened by progressive socialism.
This incredible journey upon which I traveled has enabled me to go and speak at places unimaginable – yet attainable. And why are these things attainable? Because a good quality education is the great equalizer.
I have spoken at Cornell, Marquette, Northwestern, Liberty, Tennessee, and several other universities. But what one notices about being on the campus of Hillsdale College is the impeccable level of knowledge of our Constitution, and the ability of the students to reason with precise logic and debate with utter confidence. The other thing you have to love about Hillsdale is that it is one of the premier Liberal Arts colleges in the country, and it does not take federal dollars.
Now that is a novel idea!
Somehow we have developed this belief in America that it requires more federal dollars in order to create educational success. We have embraced a sentiment that only with top-down, federally mandated education standards can our students be successful – even though the opposite has proven true. Since the Jimmy Carter administration when the government department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) was split out into three different agencies, one being the Department of Education – consider what has happened to the quality of education in America. With a little research, you can see the ever-increasing budget of the DoEduc, coupled with the ever-decreasing rankings of our students’ academic performance.
After speaking at Hillsdale, I returned back to Birmingham, Michigan, to speak at another event. In the car with me were two Hillsdale students, and we began a discussion on Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution; namely the suspension of the writ of habeus corpus. Our conversation centered around President Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of said writ during the Civil War and the relevance to the recent violent political protests being conducted by progressive socialists. This is the level of discourse that we should be having on our campuses – not the inane cries for “safe spaces.”
Saturday evening I had the distinct pleasure and honor to speak at the Spring Speakers series for Bloomfield Christian School. This is a K-12 Classical Christian school and they focus on scholarship, discipleship, and citizenship. Bloomfield Christian employs the “Trivium,” a time-tested and “classical” approach to education which focuses on three stages of a child’s learning: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. That evening I saw students from several grade levels of the school perform magnificently and pondered why. Why is this not the standard, the model for education in America? Why is it that we have so much reticence and push back towards educational competition with charter schools, school choice, and something we are researching at the National Center for Policy Analysis, education savings accounts?
Why are we focused on the notion of making public college education free and relieving college student loan debt? We should be strengthening the 529 College Financing plans, a tax-free for middle-income level families to save and ensure the promise of a good quality education for their children.
Here is what is at stake with education in America: shall we develop the next generation of scholars, productive critical thinkers, and citizens? Or will we find ourselves creating a new generation of test takers, mindless coddled lemmings, and subjects?
Let me draw your attention to a video that evidences the latter. It’s a 9:30 interview on Fox Business News between host Neil Cavuto and Keely Mullen, the representative of the “Million Student March.” As you listen to this interview you will see what happens when this nation does not value quality education, but rather embraces a sense of indoctrination. As I watch this video, I am not upset with Keely. I am upset with a failed education system that is producing students like Keely all over the country. I am upset with an education system more concerned with the whims of the teachers unions than the future of our young men and women.
I am upset with individuals who call themselves teachers and professors who are nothing more than ministers of progressive socialist ideology. When I watched Keely, I wished that she had been taught at Bloomfield Christian in a classical education centered on the “Trivium.” I wish Keely could have attended Hillsdale College in order to better learn the fundamental principles of our Republic and also those of free market economics – not be a talking point receptacle of Marxist principles.
That evening at the Defender Dinner for Bloomfield Christian School, I was touched by a little black child named Evan. Evan was a first grader and came from a single parent household, but I watched him step up to the microphone and brilliantly recite a lengthy bit of Biblical scripture. He stood before the gathering of some 350 adults with confidence and a disciplined demeanor.
Evan will graduate from Bloomfield. Evan will go onto Hillsdale. And because of his classical Christian and constitutional liberal education, Evan will enjoy the blessings of life, liberty, and pursue his happiness in the greatest Nation this world has ever known – all because quality education is the great equalizer.
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4)
DIVORCE AGREEMENT-- WRITTEN BY YOUNG COLLEGE STUDENT
The person who wrote this is a college (law) student.. Perhaps there is hope for us after all.
Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, etal:
We have stuck together since the late 1950's for the sake of the kids, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has clearly run its course
Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right for us all, so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.
Here is our separation agreement:
--Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a similar portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
--We don't like "spreading the wealth" so we'll keep ours and you can spread yours all you want.
--We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them.
--Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.
--We'll take the nasty, smelly oil industry and the coal mines, and you can go with wind, solar and bio diesel.
--We'll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street.
--You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps, homeless, home boys, hippies, druggies and illegal aliens.
--You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors.
--We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.
--We'll keep "under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance and we'll keep "In God we trust" on our money.
--You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism, political correctness and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. But we will no longer be paying the bill.
--We'll keep our Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood.
--You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.
--You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell. You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.
--We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks.
--You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.
--You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.
--We'll keep the SUV's, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Volt and Leaf you can find.
--We'll keep "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "The National Anthem."
--I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute "Imagine", "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing", "Kum Ba Ya" or "We Are the World".
--We'll practice trickle-down economics and you can continue to give trickle up poverty your best shot.
--Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.
Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you might think about which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.
Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American
P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin & Charlie Sheen, Barbra Streisand, & (Hanoi) Jane Fonda with you.
P.S.S. And you won't have to press 1 for English when you call our country.
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5) The Party of Lincoln
If the Republican Party accepts Trump, it will lose its soul.
The Republican Party is an organization; the Party of Lincoln is an idea. The Republican Party exists to bridge interests and support the mechanics of elections; the Party of Lincoln answers the questions “why and for what?” If the Republican Party, as now appears most likely, succumbs to the candidacy of Donald Trump, it will irreparably sever itself from the Party of Lincoln.
Ronald Reagan would never have announced plans to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, menaced Mexico with war if it did not pay for a wall between our countries, treat our alliances like a protection racket, or crudely threaten the Speaker of the House. He would not have boasted endlessly about his sexual prowess, demeaned a female journalist, or thought that the most important thing about a hostile judge was that he was “Spanish.” Politics begins with words, and Trump’s words are not vulgar; they are vile.
Republican Party leaders who endorse Trump—which many of them will do, out of fear, opportunism, resignation, or simple cowardice—will lose thereby the moral authority to lead the Party of Lincoln. If the Republican Party accepts Trump it will lose its soul, and it will become necessary to find an alternative: a different candidate, and quite possibly a new party.
Both political parties are in varying ways corrupt, beholden to interests or sub-groups or ideological obsessions. A third-party candidate, and a third party if it comes to that, should begin with principles in which it believes, and which are relevant to our current predicaments.
The first of these must be a reverence for Constitutional government, which means restraint by the courts and by the Executive Branch, whose powers have expanded steadily since the early years of the 20th century. This will put a special burden on Congress to recover its lawmaking function, and to do so in such a way that citizens can understand what their representatives have passed. Bills thousands of pages long are not really laws. A system that virtually guarantees that all of us have broken some kind of statute is not the rule of law.
The governing idea should be that of liberty. Social conservatives have no hope of rolling back changes like gay marriage and should not try; the concern of all, however, should be the protection of the fundamental freedoms embodied in the Bill of Rights, which includes the right to differ openly from the social consensus of one’s time and place.
If Trump and Sanders have risen, it is in part because the half of the United States that has done well out of globalization and the fantastic evolution of modern technology has not cared enough about the other half, which is stretched, fearful, and overwhelmed. The solution is not to expel millions of those who have arrived illegally, although any sovereign state must secure its borders and ensure an orderly process of legal immigration. Nor will a return to the beggar-thy-neighbor trade policies of an earlier era do anything but bring another, deeper global recession.
Rather, a new party platform should have as one of its central concerns a renewal of the U.S. education system, to include not only scientific and vocational education, but a rededication to civic education, so that we grow citizens and not merely angry mobs who treat elections as plebiscites or demonstrations of tribal loyalty.
The social welfare state is here to stay. The question is how to make it equitable, affordable, and conducive to independence rather than reliance on government. To that end, government must step in when the market fails, but it should use the power of the market wherever possible. As the friend of capitalism but not necessarily of capitalists, government should above all aim to make life easier for small businesses and entrepreneurs, not only because they generate employment, but because they are the bearers of American aspiration through the ages.
In foreign policy, the labels of today—often little more than slurs—are meaningless. Any sound foreign policy must secure America’s interests and her values, which often overlap but which, when they do not, must be reconciled. Prudence is a virtue, but so too is courage. The United States has benefited enormously from the global order we have helped establish since World War II. A selfish, cramped nationalism, or worse, neo-isolationism, will eventually bring disaster to others, and then to us.
Finally, a different candidate should quietly embody the old republican virtues: steadiness, civility, thrift, forthrightness, firmness, integrity, and fairness. In an age of ranting demagogues and angry activists, of secretiveness and evasion, we need someone whom we can imagine as a worthy holder of Abraham Lincoln’s office, a worthy dweller in Abraham Lincoln’s house.
Will this work? I have no idea. But the crisis of the moment, unforeseen as it is, requires that women and men of republican principles should take the risks of a course like this one. There are politicians who can lead such a movement, experts who can hammer out the policies to support it, and millions of discontented citizens who will embrace it. All that is needed is some of Lincoln’s courage.
Eliot A. Cohen served proudly in two Republican administrations.
5a)Time to Calm Down about Trump
Trump is crude and politically clueless, but no more so than the Clintons, Sanders — or Obama.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Donald J. Trump thus far has not shown that he has the level-headedness to be president. He has no political ideology and could just as well govern to the left of Hillary Clinton as to the right of her. Yet his sloppy way of speaking has earned him equally sloppy, over-the-top analogies — to Mussolini, Hitler, George Wallace, and a host of other populist and racist demagogues.
But is he uniquely dangerous, ignorant, or cruel in terms of either distant or recent American presidential history?
I don’t think so.
There are many ways to assess Trump. The debates and rallies give us glimpses of his ill-preparedness (at least in comparison to his rivals). So far his vision has not transcended banalities and generalities. He seems to have no team of respected advisers, at least not yet. Indeed, at this point, advising Trump apparently would be a career-killer in the Boston–New York–Washington corridor. No one quite knows who talks to him on foreign policy. He is an empty slate onto which millions write their hopes and dreams, as “Make America great again” channels the empty “Hope and Change.”
Those are grounds enough for rejecting him. But what we don’t need is high talk about Trump as something uniquely sinister, a villain without precedent in American electoral history or indeed public life. That is simply demonstrably false. Trump thrives despite, not because of, his crudity, and largely because of anger at Barack Obama’s divisive and polarizing governance and sermonizing — and the Republican party’s habitual consideration of trade issues, debt, immigration, and education largely from the vantage point of either abstraction or privilege.
![clip_image002]( "clip_image002")
Take Trump’s worst, most repugnant rhetoric, and there will always pop up a parallel worse — and often from the lips of the heroes of those who are blasting Trump as singularly foul. He crudely brags of his past infidelities and sexual conquests — reminding us that he has an affinity with JFK and Bill Clinton (is it worse to boast or to lie about such sins?). Whether he would attempt to match either man’s sexual gymnastics while in the Oval Office is, I think, doubtful. I don’t believe the Trump jet so far has followed Bill Clinton south to Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual fantasy island. Is Clinton ostracized by the liberal media or pundit class because of his fawning over and cavorting with a convicted sex offender? Should Harvard have rejected Epstein’s cash?
Unfortunately, Trump was not the first politician to brag about the size of his genitalia. President Lyndon Johnson reportedly offered such jock talk often — as well as reportedly exposing himself to aides. Did LBJ’s sick obsessions turn liberals off the Great Society? In her civil suit, Paula Jones settled with Bill Clinton after alleging that he had likewise pulled out his penis. Is such exhibitionism cruder than vaguely alluding to penis size? A crude Trump certainly has not entered cruder Anthony Weiner territory.
In reprehensible fashion, a Trump aide recently manhandled a female reporter. Does that act reflect a Trump culture of sexism? Perhaps. But the locus classicus of such thuggery still remains Bill Clinton (currently on the campaign trail talking of various injustices), who on at least two occasions likely assaulted women through physical violence. Will someone uncover an early Trump essay with lines like the following: “A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.” “A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously” — replete with exegeses like the following: “Many women seem to be walking a tightrope,” as their “qualities of love, openness, and gentleness were too deeply enmeshed with qualities of dependency, subservience, and masochism.” If such a Trump text is uncovered, will he then be in league with the author of those lines, the young Bernie Sanders?
Trump crudely suggested that a Hispanic judge might be prejudiced against him in an upcoming civil trial. Did he take his cue from current Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor? She is on the record as saying that race makes some judges “better” than others (“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male”). Again, the point is not just that Trump reflects a debased culture, but that the outrage is selective — e.g., is a justiceship on the Supreme Court an unimportant office?
Trump is all over the place on abortion, flip-flopping almost daily and without much clue about the mission of Planned Parenthood. But he has not seen abortion on demand as a good thing because it falls inordinately on the poor and minorities — in the fashion of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who matter-of-factly said to a friendly reporter, “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” If we thought Ginsburg’s callous remark was a slip of the tongue, she clarified it a few years later with a postscript: “It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people.” Did prominent philosophers, ethicists, and humanitarians sign a petition demanding that she step down, given her judicial ill temperament and what can only be described as displays, on not one but two occasions, of crackpot notions of racist eugenics?
I agree that it is disturbing that Trump does not grasp the nature of the nuclear triad, but so far he has not, as has Vice President Biden, claimed that a President FDR went on television in 1929 or, as has President Obama, that the Falklands are better known as the Maldives. His Trump vodka and steaks and eponymous schlock are a window into his narcissistic soul and his lack of concern with integrity; but I’ll say more about the size of his ego when he says he can cool the planet and lower the seas, and that he is the one we’ve all been waiting for — accompanied by Latin mottos and faux-Greek columns. Trump has no team to speak of. Is that because the ego-driven Trump fancies himself a genius in the manner of “I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Trump supposedly is inciting violence by creating a climate of violence at his rallies. But did he say, or was it Ronald Reagan who said, at a time of widespread unrest, “If it’s to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer”? Reagan called not for a punch or two but for something rather more existential.
Trump reprehensibly has urged his supporters to physically tangle with opponents. But, after Chicago, did he emulate a presidential urge “to argue with them and get in their face!”? When Trump does his next Philadelphia rally, will he, in Obama fashion, egg on his Trumpsters with this: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. Because from what I understand, folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”
Or maybe Trump could adapt another line from Obama and use it with his working-class white supporters, cautioning them that, instead of sitting out the election, they should say, “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.” Or maybe Trump could try still another adaptation of a line from President Obama for those stubborn senators who favor open borders: “Those aren’t the kinds of folks who represent our core American values.”
Of course, we must watch Trump’s associates. If he is indeed a devout churchgoer, will we learn of a Trump pastor analogous to the anti-Semitic, racist, and anti-American Reverend Jeremiah Wright? And will Trump get caught claiming that he is a loyal attendee of a church in the mold of Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ (“Yep. Every week. Eleven o’clock service. Ever been there? Good service.”) or that he could “no more disown” his racist pastor than his own (allegedly racist) grandmother? Is the title ofThe Art of the Deal borrowed from a sermon by a white nationalist?
We could play this tu quoque all day long, but the fact that we can play it at all suggests that Trump is hardly, by current standards, beyond the pale, much less that he is aberrant in U.S. presidential-campaign history. He is or is not as uncouth as Barack Obama, who has mocked the disabled, the wealthy, typical white people, the religious, and the purported clingers, and has compared opponents to Iranian theocrats and said that George W. Bush was “unpatriotic” — all as relish to wrecking America’s health-care system, doubling the national debt, setting race relations back six decades, politicizing federal bureaucracies, ignoring federal law, and leaving the Middle East in shambles and our enemies on the ascendant.
For those who point to Hillary Clinton as a more sober and judicious alternative, they might ask themselves whether the Trump financial shenanigans are on par with the quid pro quo Clinton Foundation scams, or whether the Trump companies are a bigger mess than Hillary’s resets. True, a historical precedent could be set in the current campaign, but that would be if Hillary Clinton was the first presidential candidate indicted before the election, given that all her serial explanations about illegally using a private server to send and receive various classified information have only led to updated and further misleading backtracking, and will continue to do so until she is either charged or, for political reasons, exonerated.
Trump certainly sounds both reckless and naïve. He repeats ad nauseam the same trite phrases, seemingly as confused as if he were claiming to have knocked away an amphibious rabbit from his canoe. He does not quite know whether Putin is a murderous thug or, as recent biographies have argued, a rather traditional Russian autocratic nationalist. He seems clueless about Israel, and he talks nonsense about stealing oil from Iraq.
My problem with all the rhetorical blather about him is whether such half-baked ideas are worse than concretely snubbing Netanyahu (e.g., “chickenshit”), or blaming, in a recent Atlantic interview, variously David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Europeans in general for the Libyan disaster — which, if I recall, was supposed to be “We came, we saw, Qaddafi died”; or perhaps it was “What difference does it make?”; or was the instigator a rogue video maker who was summarily jailed for causing our consulate to be torched?
I had thought Obama was foolish for talking of ISIS as jayvees; now I learn from the Atlantic interview that it was the Pentagon that misled him with “flash in the plan” metaphors. Obama, remember, did not render null and void his own red lines. You see, it was the U.N. and Congress, not he, that set those lines in the first place — sort of like the hapless Chuck Hagel supposedly cooking up the Bergdahl swap.
So let us all take a deep breath, calm down, allow the primary season to run its course, tally up the votes, and collate the Trump gaffes and inanities. Let us stop the condescending sermons about the Trump “mob” and cease pondering whether to walk or to support the eventual nominee — bearing in mind that a Democratic victory would, inter alia, change the Supreme Court for a generation. Let us go to the convention, seek an alternative to Trump, play out the delegate count, and then judge whether the nominee has said or done something that would appear far different from — and far worse than — the fare of our usual rogues’ gallery of presidents, advisers, judges, and senators.
![clip_image002]( "clip_image002") I would not vote for Donald Trump in the primary, given that I have no idea what he would do as president and thus most certainly hope he does not get the nomination. But he seems about on par with the current president, in terms of reckless speeches, inexperience, crudity, and cluelessness. Yet I don’t recall hearing that many in the Democratic party ever felt that Obama’s provocative and ignorant campaign utterances, along with his past associations with the likes of Tony Rezko, Revernd Wright, Bill Ayers, and Father Pfleger, had driven them to vote for a far more sober and judicious John McCain or Mitt Romney.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals.
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