Tom Sowell - My Hero! The End Of An Error! Will We Repeat?

Tom Sowell is my ideal!




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1RieIRFqN0
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Yes, the end of an error! But a terrible price has been paid from which we may never recover.

Yes, Trump is a risk but it would be almost impossible for him not to be an improvement over Obama in virtually every facet of our life.  (See 1, 1a, 1b  and 1c)

Are we dumb enough to begin another down phase by electing Hillary and can America stand it ? (1d and 1e below.)

I am bemused by those who argue to elect Trump would be immoral yet, they see no issue of immorality by electing Hillary who traded on her position to enrich herself and the Clinton Foundation.
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Finlly, Caroline Glick puts in her two cents/sense.  (See 2 below.)
Dick
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1) The Gun Control Farce
By Thomas Sowell

Surely murder is a serious subject, which ought to be examined seriously. Instead, it is almost always examined politically in the context of gun control controversies, with stock arguments on both sides that have remained the same for decades. And most of those arguments are irrelevant to the central question: Do tighter gun control laws reduce the murder rate?

That is not an esoteric question, nor one for which no empirical evidence is available. Think about it. We have 50 states, each with its own gun control laws, and many of those laws have gotten either tighter or looser over the years. There must be tons of data that could indicate whether murder rates went up or down when either of these things happened.

But have you ever heard any gun control advocate cite any such data? Tragically, gun control has become one of those fact-free issues that spawn outbursts of emotional rhetoric and mutual recriminations about the National Rifle Association or the Second Amendment.

If restrictions on gun ownership do reduce murders, we can repeal the Second Amendment, as other Constitutional Amendments have been repealed. Laws exist to protect people. People do not exist to perpetuate laws.

But if tighter restrictions on gun ownership do not reduce murders, what is the point of tighter gun control laws -- and what is the point of demonizing the National Rifle Association?

There are data not only from our 50 states but also from other countries around the world. Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm's empirical study, "Guns and Violence: The English Experience," should be eye-opening for all those who want their eyes opened, however small that number of people might be.

Professor Malcolm's book also illustrates the difference between isolated, cherry-picked facts and relevant empirical evidence.

Many gun control advocates have cited the much higher murder rates in the United States than in England as due to tighter gun control laws in England. But Professor Malcolm's study points out that the murder rate in New York has been some multiple of the murder rate in London for two centuries -- and, during most of that time, neither city had serious restrictions on gun ownership.

As late as 1954, "there were no controls on shotguns" in England, Professor Malcolm reported, but only 12 cases of armed robbery in London. Of these only 4 had real guns. But in the remainder of the 20th century, gun control laws became ever more severe -- and armed robberies in London soared to 1,400 by 1974.

"As the numbers of legal firearms have dwindled, the numbers of armed crimes have risen" is her summary of that history in England. Conversely, in the United States the number of handguns in American homes more than doubled between 1973 and 1992, while the murder rate went down.

There are relevant facts available, but you are not likely to hear about them from politicians currently pushing for tighter gun control laws, or from the mainstream media, when those facts go against the claims of gun control advocates.

Despite hundreds of thousands of times a year when Americans use firearms defensively, none of those incidents is likely to be reported in the mainstream media, even when lives are saved as a result. But one accidental firearm death in a home will be broadcast and rebroadcast from coast to coast.

Virtually all empirical studies in the United States show that tightening gun control laws has not reduced crime rates in general or murder rates in particular. Is this because only people opposed to gun control do empirical studies? Or is it because the facts uncovered in empirical studies make the arguments of gun control zealots untenable?

In both England and the United States, those people most zealous for tighter gun control laws tend also to be most lenient toward criminals and most restrictive on police. The net result is that law-abiding citizens become more vulnerable when they are disarmed and criminals disobey gun control laws, as they disobey other laws.

The facts are too plain to be ignored. Moreover, the consequences are too dangerous to law-abiding citizens, whose lives are put in jeopardy on the basis of fact-free assumptions and unexamined dogmas. Such arguments are a farce, but not the least bit funny.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2016 CREATORS.COM

1a)

The Obama era is coming to an end By NACHMAN  SHAI

According to media reports, in the 24 hours following the brutal attack by Omar Mateen on the gay club in Orlando, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a US attack.

Now that US President Barack Obama is nearing the end of his second term, he is being forced to do the thing he hates more than anything else – fight.

According to (as of yet unsubstantiated) media reports, in the 24 hours following the brutal attack by Omar Mateen on the gay club in Orlando, Islamic State (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed during an attack carried out by the US military. Regardless of whether this report is accurate or not, there is no room for doubt that the attack in Orlando and the response by the American administration in the days following it have brought the level of confrontation between the US and ISIS up a notch.

President Obama took office in January 2009. At the time, the US was mired in bloody wars on two fronts: Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, America was dealing with substantial financial deficit, partly as a result of these protracted wars. Obama promised the American public that he would bring all of the soldiers back home. He made strong and convincing statements that even convinced the Royal Swedish Academy to grant him a Nobel Peace Prize right at the start of his first term. Obama’s idea was that as the leader of the strongest nation in the world (which has since weakened greatly) he could fulfill his vision of bringing peace to the world starting at home.

In June of that same year, Obama hurried to Cairo and delivered a speech in which he spoke about his beliefs and plans for the future of relations between his country and the Muslim world.

“I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings....”

This was meant to convince 1.4 billion Muslims around the world that there is no war between Islam and modern civilization, and that Islam and the US really can exist side by side. In retrospect, Obama served as a prophet of public diplomacy – a diplomacy based on public discourse, negotiations and achieving goals through peaceful means. Every conflict that occurred over the course of his presidency Obama has tried to use public diplomacy to solve. He passionately believes that diplomacy is the solution in every case, as opposed to military actions, economic sanctions or other forceful methods.

But, if we look at what’s actually happened since Obama took office, we can see that this plan has not been terribly successful. In fact, it’s been a bit of a slap in the face for the president. Not only have the various wars around the globe not ended due to US efforts to refrain from using military force, but America’s image has been terribly tarnished and its power considerably weakened.

In every place that Obama was engaged – Ukraine, Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan – his method backfired (except for one instance in which he succeeded in convincing Syria to refrain from using chemical weapons). And yet this one exception just goes to prove that in the end, this effort wasn’t really successful either, since ISIS has succeeded in conquering large parts of Syria, where it is busy constructing a global caliphate.

The absurd has won. Obama, who employed the US military to strike hard and severely hurt al-Qaida and even eliminate its leader, Osama bin-Laden, has on the other hand enabled an even more extreme entity, ISIS, to overtake large parts of Syria and Iraq. Obama’s nightmare has actually come true. Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian army have filled the void and are starting to feel quite at home in Syria. They are intent on strengthening and bolstering Syrian President Bashar Assad in his fight against the rebels, and so have put efforts to fight ISIS on the backburner.

Obama suffered additional failures in Libya and Egypt. Libya, though Muammar Gaddafi was ousted, became a hotbed of terrorism, and in Egypt, the violent and extremist Muslim Brotherhood took over the country, which for many long years had been a US ally. It was a miracle that the Egyptian army managed to take back control of the country.

Obama’s new enemy is even more ruthless and sophisticated, and it knows how to manipulate the global media.

In fact, there is no place in the world – especially in the US and Europe – that is safe from this new threat. It wakes up sleeper cells each time they are needed and operates individuals when that is more appropriate.

This new threat wages its war using the media and social networks, reaching every corner of the globe. The social networks are trying to fight back, but to no avail.

Obama knows that he has failed on almost every one of these fronts, but refuses to admit as much. As expected, Obama has refrained from naming radical Islam as the culprit for the attacks in Orlando, Paris, or London. As an expert in public diplomacy who understands the power of words, Obama has used only unspecific, general statements when berating the enemy for its crimes.

Of course, he’s almost reached the end of his second term, so he knows that no one is going to bother making a fuss at this point.

Whichever candidate replaces Obama in another six months will need to immediately put into action a plan to fight terrorism that is tough and realistic.

She or he must strike a devastating blow against terrorist infrastructure to bring back peace to the world. Public diplomacy will always remain an option, but it must be put to use only after military actions and economic sanctions have succeeded in beating down and overwhelming the destructive terrorist organizations that have bullied us into the corner of the ring.

The author is an MK from the Zionist Union Party and recently published a book titled Caught in the Net, which examines how terrorism affects public consciousness.

Translated by Hannah Hochner 1b) “National Security Strategy based on Obfuscation, Denial, and Lies” By Allen West In full disclosure, let me state that I am a newly elected board member of the National Rifle Association and I own two AR-15 semi-automatic rifles. With that being said, one week after the largest mass shooting and second largest Islamic terrorist attack in U.S. history, I am deeply disturbed at how our nation, namely political officials, are responding. It is as if the theme is, “we have met the enemy and decided to deny their existence.” We are turning ourselves in knots as we watch the mantra of one Rahm Emanuel evidence itself yet again, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” It never ceases to amaze me how those who have a blanket of armed protection provided to them seek to tell others how to defend themselves. It is well known that the FBI has nearly 1000 Islamic terrorist investigations ongoing in the United States. And we know that the Islamic State has taken credit for the actions of Omar Mateen, for which he pledged his allegiance to ISIS and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. So the seminal question is this, if Mateen had gone on a rampage through the Pulse club with a sword, knife, machete, or hammers, where would the discussion be one week later? Would the progressive socialist left and their complicit media accomplices be articulating knife control? Or would we be wasting time in our U.S. Congress over insidious legislation that will have no effect on Islamic jihadist activities in America, western civilization? I must ask, how many of these folks clamoring for bans on semi-automatic rifles, again, a violation of our second amendment rights, have ever read the Explanatory Memorandum of the Muslim Brotherhood? That document was written in 1991 by Mohammed Akram and was uncovered in an FBI raid in the basement of a home in northern Virginia. It concisely lays out the “stealth jihad” goals and objectives, it is an open source document completely translated into English. So why do our elected officials deny this existence of the enemy and obfuscate, pivoting away towards an ideological agenda item, when 49 Americans horrifically lost their lives? But, this obfuscation and denial is the pattern of the current Obama administration who began referring to Islamic terrorist attacks as “man-caused disasters” and combat operations as “overseas contingency operations.” Early on, we had the jihadist attack of Carlos Bledsoe. Remember him? He was a young man from Memphis who traveled to Yemen and Somalia, returning to the United States to shoot two Soldiers at a Little Rock recruiting station, killing one. And then there was of course Nidal Hasan and Ft. Hood and the Islamic jihadist attack that was referred to as “workplace violence.” In Chattanooga, we had an Islamic jihadist who fired upon a recruiting station then headed to the Naval Reserve Training Facility gunning down five Marines and Sailors, killing them. His family gave us the same tired story, he was a good boy and we cannot understand what happened. The question was one of mental health even in the face of overwhelming evidence of jihadism. In Boston, the Tsarnaev brothers executed their sick jihadist attack, all the while the indicators and warning signs were clear, but no action taken. We have made profiling a very dirty word, it should not be. It is called trend analysis. And I doubt that anyone remembers what happened in Moore, Oklahoma at the chicken processing facility where an Islamic jihadist beheaded a woman and was in the process of beheading another. Thank God, a reserve law enforcement officer retrieved his…semi-automatic rifle…from his vehicle and took down the assailant. All the gun control laws and bans did not stop Syed Farouk and Tashfeen Malik in San Bernadino, and the response from President Obama and his acolytes again was gun control. Even for our deployed men and women in uniform, civilian service, and security contractors, an Islamic jihadist attack in Benghazi, Libya was denied, excused away, and lied about. If you sit quietly, listen, you will hear the Islamic terrorists and jihadists laughing at us. There are strict gun bans and control in Paris, France and Brussels, Belgium. Did that deter or stop Islamic jihadist terrorist attacks? No, it only enables them and makes their actions and targeting easier. Why? Because we have rigid ideologues who are incapable of protecting and defending us and our freedoms. They would prefer to obfuscate, deny, and lie in order to advance their own agenda and erode our individual personal liberties. They would prefer us defenseless, unable to enjoy our first unalienable right endowed by our Creator, life. The fact that there were three FBI inquiries of Omar Mateen should have sent up clear signals -- after all in baseball you get three strikes, then you are out. Mateen has associations with the American suicide bomber who died in Syria. Tashfeen Malik lied on her fiancée visa application. Nidal Hasan had communications with radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. In every case you will find that somewhere along the lines, the ball was dropped. Why? After 9-11, President Barack Obama has had a stack of Islamic jihadist attacks on his watch. Yet, he allows certain stealth jihad groups such as the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) to have access to his administration and even recommend changes, purging of Islamic terrorist training materials in the FBI and the DoD. After the Imperial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there were Japanese leaders who recommended a full invasion of America. Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor assault, replied that is was not feasible. He feared that they had indeed awakened a sleeping giant, and some quote him as saying, “there is a rifle behind every blade of grass.” That, Ladies and Gents, is called a deterrent, something the progressive socialist left wants to eradicate and evidence our weakness. A week after the second largest Islamic terrorist attack on American soil there has been no response against ISIS. There has been no action, just politicized, misguided rhetoric while ISIS sits in Raqqa laughing at us planning, inspiring, the next attack. In 490 BC at the Battle of Thermopylae, the invading tyranny of Xerxes and the Persian horde was met by 300 Spartans led by King Leonidas at the head of a Greek vanguard. Freedom was told by evil to lay down their weapons to wit Leonidas replied “Molon Labe,” which means “Come, take.” The sad reality of the past week is that it is the tyranny of our own government, in the face of evil, that is obfuscating, denying, and lying to the American people while seeking to force us to lay down our weapons. 1c) What Obama Thinks of Islamism, Communism — and America The 20th century through the eyes of Barack Obama. by ELLIOTT ABRAMS  There has been quite a debate recently about President Obama’s understanding of Islamism, and his refusal to use terms such as “Islamist terrorism.” But he has given us his view of another significant term: Communism. In one of his apparently innumerable conversations with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, President Obama explained his view of Communism. To be fair, here is the full paragraph from Goldberg: In one conversation, parts of which I’ve previously recounted, Obama talked about the decades-long confrontation between the U.S. and communism, and compared it to the current crisis. “You have some on the Republican side who will insist that what we need is the same moral clarity with respect to radical Islam” that Ronald Reagan had with communism, he said. “Except, of course, communism was not embedded in a whole bunch of cultures, communism wasn’t a millennium-old religion that was embraced by a whole host of good, decent, hard-working people who are our allies. Communism for the most part was a foreign, abstract ideology that had been adopted by some nationalist figures, or those who were concerned about poverty and inequality in their countries but wasn’t organic to these cultures.” Wow. First of all, by 1991 it is fair to say that Communism was indeed embedded in a “whole bunch” of cultures, to use the president’s phony populist phrasing. I am currently reading Second-Hand Time, by Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, which in its description of the Soviet collapse brings out the voices of lots of former Soviet citizens who were born and raised in a culture in which Communism had been embedded. But that’s a minor point compared to the president’s assessment that Communism “was a foreign, abstract ideology that had been adopted by some nationalist figures, or those who were concerned about poverty and inequality in their countries.” The notion that the Communist nomenklatura in Russia or Communist China or anywhere else was composed of people whose main goal was to eliminate poverty is bizarre and hopelessly wrong. Stalin and Mao were not motivated by reducing poverty; they were concerned with seizing and keeping power. Mao put it pretty well: “Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.” As to nationalism, it’s hard to argue that Russian national power was Lenin’s key goal. It was a stepping-stone to creating a multi-ethnic and multi-national empire, the USSR, and for the expansion of Communism to Europe and then the Third World. Just as Iranian nationalism was not the key value for Khomeini (Shia Islam was), neither was Communism essentially a form of nationalism — nor was it adopted by leaders whose goal was national power. Rather, it was adopted by those whose goal was personal power. Communism was a theory that justified and excused them in demanding totalitarian power — in crushing enemies and outlawing opposition. Orwell once called Communism a form of power worship, and he was right. Is any of this a big deal? It is an interesting insight into how the president thinks about the 20th century. His apparent view that Communism was essentially a form of idealism, combining nationalism and the search for social improvement, is wrong. It makes one wonder about his view of the Cold War, the American role in defeating Communism, and, indeed, America’s global role yesterday and today. His Hiroshima speech began this way: Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself. Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not so distant past. The problem with these words is their utter lack of context: There is no mention of Japanese militarism and fascism, no attack on Pearl Harbor, no Bataan Death March, no Rape of Nanking. It seems as though on one “bright, cloudless morning,” the United States decided to obliterate Hiroshima. This is another insight into how the president thinks about America and the 20th century: We were not the people who saved the world from fascism and Communism, we were the people who opposed nationalism and equality — and who dropped the atomic bomb. — Elliott Abrams is senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict. 1d) Are Democrats Soft on Terror? In security matters, Republicans are from Mars and Democrats are from Venus. Wonder Land Columnist Dan Henninger on why President Obama and fellow Democrats are soft on terror.  By Daniel Henninger The day after Donald Trump accused Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of refusing to say “radical Islamic terrorism,” President Obama called Mr. Trump’s charge a “distraction” from fighting terrorism. Possibly so, but it wasn’t the only distraction. Within hours of Omar Mateen verbally dedicating his slaughter of 49 people to Islamic State, terrorism got drowned out by an outpouring of other subjects. Here, for example, is the New York Times editorializing on the “many factors” that caused the Orlando massacre: “a vicious and virulent homophobia; a failure to identify and intercept those with histories of domestic abuse or threats of violence; a radicalized strain of Islam . . . .” The Times editors then added to this list “one other factor,” which of course is “easy access to guns.” Hard as it may be to focus, the subject this week is, once again, just terrorism. Back in February after the New Hampshire presidential primaries, something in the exit polls caught my eye. It was that of the four “most important” issues facing the country, Democratic voters put terrorism fourth, at 10%. For Granite State Republicans it was 23%. At the time, the 10% figure struck me mainly as an intriguing result from a small state early in the primary season. Still, the terrorist attack in San Bernardino had just occurred in December and the horrific Paris massacres a month before. But that pattern—Democrats ranking terrorism fourth at 10%—held throughout the 2016 primary season. Even in military-minded South Carolina, terrorism registered at 10% with Democrats. For South Carolina Republicans, terrorism was the top issue at 32%. In April, a study by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations of the primaries’ exit polls noticed the phenomenon: “Terrorism has been named as the top issue on average by one in ten (Democratic) voters, far behind the economy/jobs, income inequality, and health care.” Does this mean Republicans are from Mars and Democrats are from Venus? Yes it does, and the Democrats know it. A Wednesday Washington Post article titled “A Fight Over Nation’s Values” said: “Both Clinton and Obama were eager to shift the focus away from terrorism and the battle against Islamic State, an area of relative weakness for Democrats.” The article itself was about an effort by Democrats to transfer the post-Orlando political conversation to Donald Trump’s “values.” Donald Trump can certainly tweet for himself about his values. But Islamic State and its horrors, which do include San Bernardino and Orlando, began and metastasized while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton presided over national security. Voters may reasonably ask themselves in November: Can the post-Obama Democrats be trusted to do what needs to be done to shut down you-know-who in their homicidal havens across the Middle East? Put differently, why is fighting terrorism recognized as “an area of relative weakness for Democrats”? To the last man and woman, Democrats would go ballistic, if one may use that word, at the notion they are “soft” on terrorism, even if they’ve created a microagression-free vocabulary for the subject. A less tendentious reading of the exit polls, they’d say, is that nearly all Democrats think terrorism is a problem, but most believe domestic concerns, such as income inequality, deserve more attention. They’d say the differences between the two parties, or between conservatives and progressives, is a matter of degree and not common concern. I don’t think that’s true. The differences of degree are large, big enough to create significant margins of risk for the American public’s safety. More Wonder Land That difference is reflected not just in attitudinal preferences, but in policy results across a broad spectrum of real-world security matters, both domestic and international. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed the Patriot Act with virtual unanimity, presumably in recognition that the nation’s security apparatus was inadequate for the nature of this new threat. The left argued that liberal Democrats voted for it because of post-9/11 “panic.” Soon, Democrats were legislating or filing lawsuits to pare back the Patriot Act’s provisions. The law’s title itself became a shorthand derision of then-President George W. Bush. The experience with the Patriot Act, however, tracks with the divide on virtually every security issue: the many lawsuits to constrain the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the battles over the National Security Agency, litigation to end “stop-and-frisk” policing or the endless tensions over the Fourth Amendment and police investigations. There are indeed serious constitutional issues raised by these disputes, but Democrats always end up on the same side of any policy affecting domestic or national security—conveying unmistakably that they find these functions morally distasteful, rather than morally necessary. Two weeks ago, Mr. Obama told the Air Force Academy’s graduating cadets he had “put aside 50 years of failed policies” by using “diplomacy, not war.” That Air Force commencement was the 10% mind-set reflected in those exit polls. Now Hillary Clinton is wrapping herself in the Obama foreign policy. For the security threats that lie ahead, it still won’t be enough. 1e) The Immaturity of Supporting Hillary Clinton as a Woman By Dennis Prager It is hard to imagine a more immature or morally primitive stance than that of progressive women (and men) who argue how important it is to support Hillary Clinton because, as your local college would put it, she identifies as a woman. One perfect example of such thinking was the recent statement made by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright at an event on behalf of Clinton. Albright announced that "there is a special place in hell" for women who don't support women, meaning in this instance, for women who don't vote for Clinton. It is important to note that such immature thinking is to be found only on the left. Racial solidarity, ethnic solidarity, class solidarity and gender solidarity all matter to the left, not the right. When Margaret Thatcher first ran for the office of British prime minister, she would have become the first female prime minister in British history. But British conservatives, including women who supported her, rarely mentioned her gender, let alone offered it as a reason to vote for her. Conservatives in the UK and America vote for their values, not the gender or ethnicity of politicians. Then there are all those parents who yearn to tell their daughters that with the first female president there is truly no accomplishment in life to which their daughter should not aspire. But that message is as morally problematic as Albright's. Offering Clinton to one's daughter as a model to aspire to -- given the former secretary of state's long history of lying and recent history of selling the power of her office to enrich herself and her husband -- is telling one's daughter that gender trumps decency. As such, it speaks volumes about how insignificant character is to Clinton supporters. In addition, putting aside the immorality and immaturity of gender solidarity, having a female president would be as useless to women as having a black president was to blacks. In 2008 we were repeatedly told that electing a black president would be a tremendous gain for black-white relations and for black life in general. But black-white relations are worse now than in most living Americans' memories -- in large measure thanks to President Barack Obama and his race baiting, from repeatedly inviting the greatest living race demagogue, Rev. Al Sharpton; to the White House, to insulting the Cambridge, Massachusetts police for its dealings with a black Harvard professor; to his incendiary interventions in the Trayvon Martin and Ferguson, Missouri cases. Consequently, instead of acknowledging that America is the least racist multiracial, multiethnic country in world history, more blacks believe America is a congenitally racist country today than any time since the civil rights era. We were also told that with an Obama victory, young black men would see a black man in the White House and then model their behavior after his. But despite President Obama's personal example of marriage and devoted fatherhood, the birthrate of blacks out of wedlock reportedly remains over 70 percent. Additionally, crime rates in the inner city areas of Baltimore, Maryland, Chicago, Illinois and other major cities are up, and black men are committing murders and being murdered in greater numbers than before the Obama presidency. Furthermore, under Obama's economic policies blacks have lost ground in every measurable economic category over the last seven years. More blacks are impoverished today than before the Obama era. In other words, having a black president has done nothing for blacks. Likewise, the dozens of black members of Congress, the first black attorney general, the blacks holding other cabinet positions and the black mayors of major cities have done nothing to improve black quality of life. Only the left claims that having members of one's gender or ethnic or racial group in political power is important. This claim is fraudulent. One of the most successful ethnic groups in American history, Asian-American, has virtually no political power. Has that deleteriously affected Asian-Americans? So, how will having a female in the White House actually help women? Unless you think that rendering more and more women dependent on the government rather than their husbands or themselves is a good thing for women, it will do for women just as black leaders have done for blacks: more harm than good. Let me end with a heretical thought: America would be a far better place -- meaning there would be many more happy and many more decent Americans -- if more parents told their daughters that they might consider becoming a great mother and a great wife in addition to, or even in preference to, becoming a great lawyer, CEO or president. Our society doesn't lack women or men who wish to be president nearly as much as it lacks women who want to be mothers and wives, and men who want to be fathers and husbands. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

2)

By Caroline Glick

Like blades of grass, a libertarian group that abhors limitations on private ownership of firearms? In other words, are Islamic State and its fellow jihadists from Iran to Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram and al Qaida adjuncts of the Republican Party? Is Omar Baghdadi, the self-declared caliph at the helm of ISIS a social conservative, a libertarian and a card carrying member of the GOP, or just one of the three? Because President Barack Obama seems to think that this is the question most Americans should be asking. In his statement on the massacre on Sunday, Obama placed Mateen's action in the context the partisan debate on gay rights and gun control.

With regard to the former, Obama said that the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, which was the site of the attack was more than a mere nightclub. It was, "a place of solidarity and empowerment where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds and to advocate for their civil rights." In other words, Obama intimated, the victims were murdered because Mateen opposed all of those things, specifically.

Turning to gun rights, Obama said, "The shooter was apparently armed with a handgun and a powerful assault rifle. This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well." So as the president sees things, if you oppose limitations on firearm ownership, then you're on Mateen's side.

To say that Obama's behavior is unpresidential is an understatement. His behavior is dangerous. It imperils the United States and its citizens.

Adolf Hitler did not go to war against Great Britain because he opposed parliamentary democracy. Hitler went to war against Britain because he wanted to rule the world and Britain stood in his way.

Just so, Islamic jihadists are not sides in America's domestic policy debates about gun ownership and gay rights. Islamic jihadists like Mateen, the Tsarnaev brothers from Boston, Nidal Malik Hassan at Ft. Hood, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi at Garland, Texas, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik in San Bernadino didn't decide to slaughter innocents because of their passionate opposition to the liberal takeover of the US Supreme Court.

They killed Americans because they thought that doing so advances their goal of instituting the dominion of Islamic totalitarians across the world. They oppose freedom and democracy because democracy and freedom stand in the way of their goal to subordinate humanity to an Islamic caliphate.

Maybe Obama is right that more limitations on gun ownership would have limited Mateen's ability to acquire the means to slaughter fifty people. Then again, maybe if guns were easier to come by, Mateen's victims would have stopped him as soon as he started firing.

There are data supporting both views. A learned exchange about whether or not restrictions on gun ownership would advance or detract from the fight against Islamic violence would be worthwhile.

But to his disgrace, Obama is not remotely interested in having that debate. To the contrary, he has silenced it for nearly eight years. And as he made clear on Sunday, he has no intention of enabling such a discussion now.

The same Obama who was quick to blame permissive gun laws and anti-gay discrimination for the bloodbath, refused to mention the fact that Islam was Mateen's expressed motive for committing the carnage.

While unforgivable, Obama's silence on the cause of Mateen's bloodbath was predictable. From the outset of his first term Obama has studiously avoided discussing the Islamic motivation that stands behind most of the terrorism in the US and throughout the world.

The most devastating outcome of Obama's behavior is not necessarily the policies he has adopted to counter Islamic violence. Some of those policies are reasonable. Some of his policies are dangerous and destructive. And it is important to discuss each of them on its merits.

The most devastating, and at this point clearly premeditated, outcome of Obama's refusal to name the cause of the violence is that he has made it illegitimate to discuss it. He has made it controversial for Americans to talk about Islamic supremacism, extremism, violence and war for world domination.

He has made substantive criticism of his policies tantamount to bigotry. And he has rendered the public debate about the most salient strategic threat to American lives, liberty and national security a partisan issue.

Today in Obama's America, only Republicans use the terms Islamic terrorism or radicalism or jihad. Democrats pretend those things don't exist.

Making clear the partisan assault intrinsic to Obama's position, following his statement Sunday, Democratic Senator from Connecticut Richard Blumenthal blamed Republicans for the massacre at the Pulse.

Referring to the jihadist attack as "a public health crisis," caused by "gun violence," Blumenthal alleged that fifty people who went dancing in Orlando Saturday night never made it home because Republican Senators oppose Obama's bill to limit gun ownership rights.

This sort of talk, which makes opponents of leftist policies and ideology illegitimate, is arguably Obama's dangerous legacy.

Obama's efforts to render discussion of Islamic violence an illegitimate topic of debate is part of his larger policy of Europeanizing American politics.

For more than a generation, the Left's policies have reigned supreme in Europe. For leftist ideologues and politicians, controlling policies was never sufficient though. To truly rule, they set out to control the public discourse in order to delegitimize their opponents.

And they succeeded. Today it is impossible for Europeans to openly debate the policies and social forces that affect their lives.