It is tragic that we have a supposed American President who cannot embrace the concept that terrorists. whether American born or not. can kill in the name of Allah and is Commander in Chief of
our military. (See 1 below.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Once again, the agency that is going to screen and protect us screwed up and since nothing in the government seems to work how can anyone wonder why taxpayers, the few that are left, are disgusted. (See 2 below.)
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Erick Erickson beginning to have self doubts. (See 3 below.)
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Most every calculation Obama has made regarding his foreign policies and most particularly those pertaining to The Middle East, have blown up in his face.
He might try another end run and it could create problems but it too will fail if his goal is truly that which he professes - peace. You cannot force love, courage, decency. It has to come from within if it is genuine. (See 4 below.)
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If you conclude you are not at war then your tactics take on a wholly different form. Obama cannot bring himself to believe we are at war against radical Muslims and eventually could be at war or engaged in a confrontation with China, N Korea, Russia and/or Iran so he assumes the tactics of a loser.
His apparent desire is to handcuff whomever becomes our next president so they will be forced to carry through in supporting his legacy which has proven to be a complete disaster.
Every president's actions have an effect on his successor. Obama more than most. Obama thinks like the community organizer he truly is and thus, believes bad people can be relied upon to turn good if they are shown the light. He places his misplaced faith in the mistaken belief weakness is strength and is surprised when positive responses do not occur. He has made one miscalculation after the other and millions have paid the price of his naivety through death and lost homes. Seldom has an American president brought such tragic consequences to the world as has Obama.
Consequently, Trump has little wiggle room should he win and if he has a split Congress he will truly be forced to become more radical if he wants to accomplish anything towards his agenda. As for Hillary, she is far more willing to align herself with Obama's policies and will feel less constrained but she too will be limited by a split Congress but Republicans have always proven far more malleable and willing to cave.
Either way, I continue to believe the next four years are tenuous for America, for world peace at best.
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The Dept. of Education should be completely de-funded and shut down if our Republic and youth have any hope of re-flourishing learning what will prepare them to compete. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1) Obama wary of generals, admirals commanding in war
By Rowan Scarborough
From left: Army Gen. Mark Milley, Navy Adm. John Richardson, Marine Corps Gen. Robert Neller and Air Force Gen. David Goldfein acknowledged to the Senate Arms Services Committee that they had not discussed the readiness crisis with their commander in chief. Donald Trump said generals under President Obama have been "reduced to rubble." (Associated Press)
As the four armed forces chiefs testified in the Senate about the national security dangers of mandated budget caps, Sen. Lindsey Graham asked each officer if he had discussed the readiness crisis with President Obama.
Their unanimous answers before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week underscored a key aspect of the Obama presidency, noted by his own past defense secretaries and, in a recent disclosure, a former NATO commander: The president maintains a wary approach in dealing with the four-star generals and admirals who direct his wars.
"Have you told the president what you're telling us about the state of the military under sequestration?" asked Mr. Graham, South Carolina Republican. "Have you had a conversation with the commander in chief, telling him what you just told us?"
Army Gen. Mark Milley was the first to answer. "I have not personally had a conversation."
As Mr. Graham's roll call continued, Navy Adm. John Richardson, Marine Corps. Gen. Robert Neller and Air Force Gen. David Goldfein gave the same answer: "No."
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said this month at an NBC News forum that generals have been "reduced to rubble" by Mr. Obama. Although that may be Trump hyperbole, the president's own political appointees acknowledge a problem.
Robert M. Gates, Mr. Obama's first defense secretary, wrote in his memoirs that Mr. Obama deeply distrusts senior military leaders and suspects them of conspiring against him. He recalled one meeting in which the president resorted to a clipped "That's an order" to the top brass.
"That order was unnecessary and insulting, proof positive of the depth of the Obama White House distrust of the nation's military leadership," a "shocked" Mr. Gates wrote.
"The controlling nature of the Obama White House and the staff took micromanagement and operational meddling to a new level," he said in his memoir, "Duty." "I think Obama considered time spent with generals and admirals an obligation."
Mr. Gates' successor, Leon E. Panetta, wrote in his memoir, "Worthy Fights," that the White House — read Mr. Obama — saw generals who swayed from its talking points as conspirators. One incident involved a disagreement over troop levels in Afghanistan.
"The White House saw this as a coordinated effort to limit the president's decision space, while Gates saw it as evidence that the Pentagon brass was unable to stay on message," Mr. Panetta wrote. "For my part, it seemed that the leading generals saw the problem the same way and weren't good about keeping quiet, but not that they were organizing a campaign against their president."
Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal ended up getting fired by the White House as the top commander in Afghanistan after he disagreed publicly with the strategy and his staff made unkind remarks about senior officials in a published story.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, a close adviser to Mr. Trump, said he was fired by Mr. Obama as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency because he pushed for identifying the terrorist threat as radical Islam and for wanting to do more about it. Mr. Obama refuses to link Islam the religion with terrorism.
Mr. Flynn defended Mr. Trump's "rubble" characterization on "Fox & Friends."
"He's absolutely right. There's a severe disconnect between this White House and frankly the president and our military," the former intelligence chief said. "I mean, there's a lot of frustration within the ranks, and there's a lot of frustration I know in the senior leadership about what we're not able to do."
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton immediately criticized Mr. Trump's "rubble" remark and, in effect, defended Mr. Obama's handling of his generals.
"It's hard to forget what Trump did last night," Mrs. Clinton said in a campaign speech. "It was a test, and he failed it. He trash-talked about America's generals, saying that they've been, quote, 'reduced to rubble.' He suggested he would fire them all and hand-pick his own generals since, you know, he knows so much about what it takes to be a general.
He attacked dozens of former flag officers."
Mrs. Clinton recounted Mr. Obama's careful discussions with top military and national security leaders before approving the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Mrs. Clinton, as Mr. Obama's first secretary of state, also accused Mr. Trump of being "unpatriotic" for what she claimed is his preference for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the U.S. president.
The Obama administration is fresh from negotiating a cease-fire agreement with the Putin government for Syria and setting up a joint Russian-U.S. command center.
As a senator in 2007, Mrs. Clinton famously ridiculed the testimony on the Iraq troop surge from Army Gen. David Petraeus.
"You have been made the de facto spokesman for what many of us believe to be a failed policy," Mrs. Clinton said. "Despite what I view as your rather extraordinary efforts in your testimony both yesterday and today, I think that the reports that you provide to us really require a willing suspension of disbelief."
Another four-star casualty in the Obama years is retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, who was pushed out by the White House as chief of U.S. Central Command because of his hard-line view toward Iran, according to congressional observers. The White House wanted a nuclear deal with Tehran and wanted Gen. Mattis' voice silenced, the sources say.
An Aug. 10 report by a joint House panel on CentCom intelligence-skewing said Gen. Mattis "was forced to depart abruptly in early 2013."
"The leadership environment within CENTCOM and its Intelligence Directorate deteriorated significantly following the 2013 departure of Marine General James Mattis and his senior intelligence leaders," the report said.
In retirement, Gen. Mattis has been a sharp critic of the strategy to defeat the regional threat of the Islamic State, which controls territory in Syria and Iraq and has set up and inspired terrorist armies in at least six nearby nations.
In April, Gen. Mattis said the Iran deal "fell short" by merely delaying, but not eliminating, Iran's timetable for building nuclear weapons. He said Shiite-theocratic Iran is "not a nation state, but a revolutionary cause intent on mayhem."
Gen. Mattis is not the only combatant regional commander who disagreed with the White House.
Recently retired Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, who commanded NATO, was having so much trouble in even talking with the White House that he asked former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to intercede. His intermediary was Harlan Ullman, a longtime Washington military analyst.
His email conversations were obtained by the hacking group DCLeaks.
Gen. Breedlove, then in command, wrote to Mr. Powell: "Thank you for this. Sorry for the tardy reply. I know Harlan has passed some of my proposed 'asks' of you. Let me add one thought. I may be wrong but I do not see this WH really 'engaged' by working with Europe/NATO. Frankly I think we are a 'worry' ie a threat to get the nation drug into a conflict vice an 'opportunity' represented by some pretty stalwart allies. I seek your counsel on two fronts, how to frame this opportunity in a time where all eyes are on ISIL all the time, and two, how to work this personally with the POTUS. v/r Phil."
At the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Chairman John McCain, Arizona Republican, said this year's defense budget is $150 billion below the 2011 level because of "arbitrary" cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act.
"Rising threats and declining budgets have led to shrinking military forces that are struggling to sustain higher operational tempo with aging equipment and depleted readiness," said Mr. McCain.
The service chiefs then laid out what Adm. Richardson called a readiness "whammy."
"We are compromising the readiness of those ships and aircraft that we will have to surge to achieve victory in a large conflict," he said. "And we have also curtailed our modernization in a number of areas critical to staying ahead of our potential adversaries.
Said Gen. Neller, "I believe we are now pushing risk and the long-term health of the force into the future."
All four service chiefs said they will not have the capacity to defend the nation against all threats if automatic caps, called sequestration, continue.
Said Mr. Graham: "I will make some suggestions to you. Go tell the president what you're telling us. I absolutely see the flaws in what the White House is doing.
"I can't believe the commander in chief is sitting on the sidelines and watching this happen, taking a laissez-faire attitude that, if you send me a bill that increases defense spending without increasing non-defense spending, I will veto it," the senator said. "I find that is repugnant as what the White House is doing."
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2)
MORE THAN 800 IMMIGRANTS MISTAKENLY GRANTED CITIZENSHIP
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government has mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants from countries of concern to national security or with high rates of immigration fraud who had pending deportation orders, according to an internal Homeland Security audit released Monday.
The Homeland Security Department's inspector general found that the immigrants used different names or birthdates to apply for citizenship with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and such discrepancies weren't caught because their fingerprints were missing from government databases.
DHS said in an emailed statement that an initial review of these cases suggest that some of the individuals may have ultimately qualified for citizenship, and that the lack of digital fingerprint records does not necessarily mean they committed fraud.
The report does not identify any of the immigrants by name, but Inspector General John Roth's auditors said they were all from “special interest countries” — those that present a national security concern for the United States — or neighboring countries with high rates of immigration fraud. The report did not identify those countries.
DHS said the findings reflect what has long been a problem for immigration officials — old paper-based records containing fingerprint information that can't be searched electronically. DHS says immigration officials are in the process of uploading these files and that officials will review “every file” identified as a case of possible fraud.
Roth's report said fingerprints are missing from federal databases for as many as 315,000 immigrants with final deportation orders or who are fugitive criminals. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not reviewed about 148,000 of those immigrants' files to add fingerprints to the digital record.
The gap was created because older, paper records were never added to fingerprint databases created by both the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service and the FBI in the 1990s. ICE, the DHS agency responsible for finding and deporting immigrants living in the country illegally, didn't consistently add digital fingerprint records of immigrants whom agents encountered until 2010.
The government has known about the information gap and its impact on naturalization decisions since at least 2008 when a Customs and Border Protection official identified 206 immigrants who used a different name or other biographical information to gain citizenship or other immigration benefits, though few cases have been investigated.
Roth's report said federal prosecutors have accepted two criminal cases that led to the immigrants being stripped of their citizenship. But prosecutors declined another 26 cases. ICE is investigating 32 other cases after closing 90 investigations.
ICE officials told auditors that the agency hadn't pursued many of these cases in the past because federal prosecutors “generally did not accept immigration benefits fraud cases.” ICE said the Justice Department has now agreed to focus on cases involving people who have acquired security clearances, jobs of public trust or other security credentials.
Mistakenly awarding citizenship to someone ordered deported can have serious consequences because U.S. citizens can typically apply for and receive security clearances or take security-sensitive jobs.
At least three of the immigrants-turned-citizens were able to acquire aviation or transportation worker credentials, granting them access to secure areas in airports or maritime facilities and vessels. Their credentials were revoked after they were identified as having been granted citizenship improperly, Roth said in his report.
A fourth person is now a law enforcement officer.
Roth recommended that all of the outstanding cases be reviewed and fingerprints in those cases be added to the government's database and that immigration enforcement officials create a system to evaluate each of the cases of immigrants who were improperly granted citizenship. DHS officials agreed with the recommendations and said the agency is working to implement the changes.
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3) Reconsidering My Opposition to Trump
The polling has drawn ever closer. More and more people wonder if those of us who are NeverTrump should finally yield knowing that we can beat Hillary Clinton. I am in an odd position. I am mindful that should Trump win, the Republican establishment will blame people like me for giving rise to Trump. Likewise, I know if Trump loses, the Republican establishment will blame people like me for giving rise to Trump and Trump supporters will blame people like me for his loss. I suppose I should say not that I’m in an odd position, but that I am in a no-win position.
With Donald Trump’s rise in the polls and the increasingly competitive nature of the race, it is time to reconsider my opposition to Trump. After all, I view Hillary Clinton’s candidacy as anti-American.
I realize saying Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is, in my view, “anti-American” offends some or comes off as hyperbolic, but I think her candidacy is fundamentally anathema to and is fundamentally in opposition to basic, historic American values. I believe the founders of this country recognized individual liberty as negative liberty. It was not what individuals could do if government helped them that made this country great. Rather, it was what individuals could do if government left them alone.
Hillary Clinton’s vision of a leviathan nanny state runs counter to those ideals. She would expand the government, engage the government in social experimentation, and she would advance the agenda of the sexual revolution against the church. I am under no delusions. With Clinton as President, the church in this country will be in for a difficult time, besieged from the outside. The forces of Mordor will be fully on the march.
With Hillary Clinton, the Supreme Court will fall into the hands of the left for a generation at least. The devastation to our social fabric will know no end. Trading in the idea of negative liberty, Clinton and a left-wing Supreme Court will pursue expansionist federal policies and concepts of positive liberty that advance the individual prurient interests of deviants against the church in ways the founders would not have anticipated and no rational person would think wise. But Clinton as President will mean the insane have taken over the asylum.
Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote, “What was once stigmatized as deviant behavior is now tolerated and even sanctioned; what was once regarded as abnormal has been normalized . . . . As deviancy is normalized, so what was once normal becomes deviant. The kind of family that has been regarded for centuries as natural and moral – the ‘bourgeois’ family as it is invidiously called – is now seen as pathological.” Clinton’s Presidency will lock that in.
In addition to that, the increasingly illiberal left will further capitulate in the face of evil, choosing to surrender to radical Islamists blowing themselves up as a new normal.
In short, I see the election of Hillary Clinton as the antithesis of all my values and ideas on what fosters sound civil society in this country. Further, she should be in jail.
At least with Trump we might, might, get a better Supreme Court. We might get better cabinet picks. In fact, in terms of my view of the country the odds are pretty great that my side has a greater chance of prevailing with Trump than Clinton. What most would identify as my side would have control of the Executive Branch and the powers of appointment and regulation that come with it.
So I should at least here and now, as the race draws close, reconsider my opposition to Trump. The truth is, with headlines about Clinton’s emails, terrorist attacks, the Obama Administration’s advancement of transgenderism in the military, etc. I have been actively reconsidering my opposition to Trump. I’ve done it in conversation with friends, in prayer, and in quiet time dedicated to considering the future.
In so doing, I have to admit that while I may view Hillary Clinton’s campaign as anti-American, I view Donald Trump’s campaign as un-American.
The American spirit eschews the idea of a strong man in Washington fixing all our problems. We are supposed to be against the imposition of values set by Washington and instead should embrace our heterogeneity as a people. Not only does Donald Trump not do that, but his views pervert the liberal order of things as much as Clintonian illiberalism. Clinton offers a tyranny of the minority and Trump offers a tyranny of the majority. Clinton offers neither safety nor freedom and Trump offers safety at the expense of freedom. While I see Clinton as having no virtue, I see Donald Trump corrupting the virtuous and fostering hatred, racism, and dangerous strains of nationalism.
More importantly, while I think Hillary Clinton will do long term damage to the country, I believe Donald Trump will do far more damage to the church, which must be my chief priority. A Clinton Administration may see the church besieged from the outside, but a Trump Administration will see the church poisoned from within.
I see it happening even now. This past Friday I debated the merits of Trump and sat next to a Christian who argued that because God chose sinners, we should choose Trump. She argued that a bunch of other Presidents were terrible, immoral people so we should be okay with Trump. She argued that God chose Abraham, Samson, and David, so we should choose Trump.
I do not recall John F. Kennedy writing books bragging about his affairs. I do not recall Bill Clinton telling a television audience he wanted to have sex with his daughter. How far a Christian must fall to justify the low morals of one man by tearing down the reputations of others in sometimes exaggerated manners. And I do recall God choosing Abraham, Samson, and David and all of them repenting of their sins. That repentance stands in studied contrast to Donald Trump who has three times said he never had to ask for forgiveness and only recently said his advance of the church, if he is elected, might be the only thing that gets him into Heaven.
That is a far cry from sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, et soli Deo gloria
When I see Christians defining deviancy down to justify a political decision, I see a real problem for the church. When I see Christians saying we have license to choose bad men because God chose bad men, I see the sparks of apostasy. Many of my friends have turned themselves over to the anger Trump displays. I see friends on twitter in meltdown, tweeting profanity at others, spending their time on radio attacking friends by name for refusing to yield. That is not healthy. But not only is it not healthy, it reeks of desperation.
“This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father, to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:27). Trump has openly championed funding an organization that would murder the would be orphan and sell his organs while he has cheated widows and single moms of their money. And more and more Christians are championing his stains while staining themselves.
The level of fear many of my friends have towards what a Clinton Administration may bring has turned to desperation and desire for a protector. But we already have one and neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)
So many pastors who email me to beg me to reconsider and so many others who write do so because they think this is the last best chance to get this nation right. They think we will turn a corner after which we cannot turn back. While I concede they may be right, what I see is a level of desperation causing them to place their trust in one strong man instead of God. And, in truth, I do not concede they are right, but have concluded we are already past the point of redemption when the best either party can do is offer up Clinton or Trump. We are beyond the point of looking to five black robed masters to save us from ourselves when we put up either a Clinton or a Trump. The seriousness and virtue of the voter is in the grave already and my Christian brethren for Trump yearn for an idolized past that never existed in a future that is not theirs, but God’s, to shape.
Christians looking for a strong man to protect the church instead of the strongest man who conquered death is a terrible thing to see. Many Christian leaders are engaging in a kind of syncretism, trying to blend patriotism with Christianity. They seemingly argue that if the nation falls, the church falls and for the church to rise the country must rise. But Christ has already risen so the true church is in no danger of falling. The gates of hell shall not prevail.
Seeing men like Wayne Grudem and others beclown themselves trying to justify support of a man like Trump makes me weep for the shallow faith of a church more wrapped up in its Americanness than its Godliness. I have to say I was truly blown away by having a Christian sit next to me on Friday and argue that we should support an immoral adulterer who had never asked for forgiveness because of what he might do for Christians.
Just read Wayne Grudem’s attack on Rudy Giuliani in 2012 to see his hypocrisy derived from desperation now:
So it seems to me that if evangelicals don’t support Romney in a significant way, Giuliani will be the Republican candidate. So then we will have a pro-abortion, pro-gay rights candidate who is on his third marriage and had a messy affair prior to his divorce from his second wife. Then we will lose any high moral ground and the enthusiasm of the evangelical vote (many of whom will just sit it out), and the difference between Giuliani and Clinton will be only one of degrees as he shifts leftward in the general election to appeal to the “middle.” So then if we lose, we lose, and even if we win, we lose on the crucial moral issues of abortion and protection of marriage. Romney is a much better choice. But he needs evangelical support now if he is going to win.
How now can Grudem advance his witness to questioning unbelievers? He now praises an unrepentant man both guilty of and proud of the very sins he attacked Giuliani for. Even Giuliani never wrote a book bragging about his affairs with married women or boasting of taking advantage of others through strategic bankruptcy filings and shorting laborers. One can hardly escape the conclusion that had Giuliani been the nominee, Grudem would be chastising Christians for not wanting to vote for the man.
Scripture tells me (and you) that believers should have nothing to do with any person who holds himself out as a Christian and is unrepentant.
But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church[a] whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”1 Corinthians 5:11-13
We instruct you, brothers, in the name of [our] Lord Jesus Christ, to shun any brother who conducts himself in a disorderly way and not according to the tradition they received from us.2 Thess 3:6
This is the inerrant word of God and Christians are choosing to ignore it because they have convinced themselves they are not electing a priest, but a President. Therefore they have segregated the commands of their faith from the desires for themselves. I cannot bifurcate my faith in that way. I cannot in good conscience support anyone who bears the name of brother when he is unrepentant of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler.
It is not just because of my values, but for Donald Trump’s own salvation that I cannot embrace him. For Wayne Grudem and Janet Parshall and other Christians to support Trump in his present rebellious state against God to serve their political interests is selfishness.
Here now is a man in Donald Trump who sees no need to be saved and has no understanding of a faith he professes. And he sees Christians cheering him on in his rebellious state, defending him when they blasted others for the very same sins.
The whole purpose of shunning the unrepenant sinner is to drive him to God. Yet, Christians in America are cheering on this rebellious sinner providing him no reason at all to repent. American Christians in politics are so busy trying to save their political interests they are ignoring scripture and losing a soul to hell. Saying they’ll pray for Trump flies in the face of the admonition of scripture. We should not put off the steps to push Trump toward reconciliation with his Lord in hopes he gets the Presidency. Then it makes it less likely he will reconcile in that distracted state and more likely we lose a soul to hell.
All Christendom should be ashamed we are putting our needs in this temporary place ahead of saving a soul bound for eternity.
That I see so many Christians justifying Donald Trump’s immorality, defining deviancy down, and turning to anger and despondency about the future tells me I cannot in good faith support Donald Trump because his victory would have lasting, damaging consequences for Christianity in America. We harm our witness and the testimony of the strength of our Lord by embracing the immoral, unrepentant strong man. We harm our American virtue by buying into the idea that one man can make America great again. Further, we risk losing Donald Trump’s soul for the sake of our selfishness.
Lastly, for those who compare Trump to Cyrus, God never asked his people to support Cyrus’s cause, only to accept him as their ruler. God never asks his people to choose between the lesser of two evils. God uses all men, from pharaoh to Trump. And he can do so without making Christians endorse the person’s sins. God did not tell the Jews to throw open the gates of Jerusalemn for Nebuchadnezzar. God did that himself. God shut the door of the ark and brought the rain and dried again the land. God raises us from the dust of the earth and he stitched us together in our mothers’ wombs. He holds the entire universe in the palm of his hand. God can see us through all things if we aren’t so busy pretending his will and exercising pretended divine authority. His will be done. If God wants Trump in the White House, he does not need my vote or a violation of my conscience to get Trump there. To think otherwise is to think God is not God.
I think Hillary Clinton will do lasting damage to the country. I cannot vote for her.
Having reconsidered my opposition to Trump, I think Donald Trump will do lasting damage to the witness of the Church in America and I therefore cannot vote for him.
I am without a candidate. I just cannot vote for either one. Whichever is elected, it is God’s will and as his holy and inerrant scripture commands, I will pray for my President as I pray for the current President. But I will not harm my witness nor risk Trump’s soul to serve my political desires.
The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. I do not believe a vote for either candidate glorifies God and I am certain neither advances his kingdom.
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4)
Obama’s Last Tango With Netanyahu
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
When President Obama meets with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in New York tomorrow, where both are attending the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, the stakes will be even higher than they usually are when these two bitter antagonists get together. This will probably be the last time the pair meet before Obama leaves office and there has been intense speculation about whether the president will pressure the prime minister to make more concessions to the Palestinians to restart the peace process.
But the focus on what Netanyahu will give the Palestinians is, as usual, mistaken. The prospects of peace rest, as they have throughout the eight years of the Obama presidency, on the willingness of the Palestinians to make peace, not on whether the Israelis can be coerced to do Washington’s bidding. The question is whether even at this late date Obama will learn his lesson and avoid actions that will exacerbate rather than heal the conflict.
But Obama was wrong. Several years of ginned up spats with Israel did nothing to move the Palestinians from the intransigent position they had assumed in the months before Obama took office. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had refused a peace offer from Israel in 2008. In the years that followed, nothing Obama did to tilt the diplomatic playing field in Abbas’s direction caused him to budge from his refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state.
Now with only a few months left in his presidency, Obama is believed to be interested in trying again. He may decide not to oppose another push to get the Security Council to recognize Palestinian independence without first forcing the Palestinians to make peace with Israel. Or he could lay down parameters for a theoretical peace deal that would undermine Israel’s negotiating position by imposing terms favorable to the Palestinians rather than letting the parties negotiate them directly. The expectation is that the president would wait until after the presidential election before taking his final revenge on Netanyahu so as not to damage Hillary Clinton’s prospects.
Fear about the possibility of such a last minute betrayal is what drove the pro-Israel AIPAC lobbying group to persuade a bipartisan coalition of 88 U.S. senators to sign a letter urging the president to veto any one-sided resolution on the conflict, as has always been done in the past. But neither the overwhelming majority of the Senate nor the pleas of the pro-Israel community are likely to have much impact on Obama’s decision.
Is there anything that could stay his hand from ending his presidency by stabbing Israel in the back? State Department veteran Dennis Ross, who served under Obama, claims the outcome of the U.S. election could influence Obama’s actions. The president might be loath to do anything that ties Hillary Clinton’s hands if she wins. But if Trump is going to be his successor, Ross thinks Obama will seek to “do something that binds, creates standards for the future that the next president couldn’t undo.” That would mean passing a UN resolution that would recognize Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank and Jerusalem and brand hundreds of thousands of Jews living in the territories and the capital as outlaws.
Such a malicious act would be a shot in the arm to the BDS—boycott, divest, sanction—movement and heighten Israel’s diplomatic isolation. But what it would not hasten peace. The Palestinians have already rejected several offers of statehood from Israel, and there is no sign that Abbas has the desire or the political strength to change. With a renewal of the murder campaign known as the stabbing intifada this past weekend, the Palestinians’ PA-driven hatred of Jews was on full display. What critics of Israel still fail to understand is that these attacks aren’t a protest about settlements or where the borders between two states should be placed. The issue is intolerance of the Jewish presence anywhere in the country, on either side of the 1967 lines.
Should Barack Obama’s objective of more “daylight” reach its culmination at the UN, the most likely result will be more Palestinian violence. Palestinian leaders seek to capitalize on Israel’s isolation. Obama seems unwilling to learn from his mistakes and won’t exit office as the great peacemaker that he thought he would be. But it would be far better for his record if he chooses to do no harm and avoids having the blood of the next round of victims on his conscience.
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5)
If Lenore Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids (2009) was the book that told parents it was okay to liberate their children from the overprotective parenting expectations of their generation, Abby Schachter’s new book may be the one that tells them to liberate themselves from overprotection by government. No Child Left Alone: Getting the Government Out of Parenting will be compared to Skenazy’s book for just this reason, and not only because Skenazy wrote the foreword.
But where Skenazy’s goal was to free parents from their own counter-productive expectations, Schachter’s project is a political one. The problem for Schachter is not our view of parenting— though she is largely in agreement with Skenazy there—but the tangle of laws and regulations that have made it much more difficult for parents to raise their children as they see fit. They both say the dominant approach to parenting and the expanding role of the state in matters that used to be within the purview of parents are harming kids.
No Child Left Alone examines a number of instances where the state’s intervention has made it difficult or impossible for parents to parent they way they’d like. Each chapter tackles a different issue, ranging from breastfeeding to daycare to diet to toys, and each highlights actual parents (termed “Captain Mommies and Daddies”) who have fought various mandates or regulations to try to reclaim their rights. The book persuasively documents the range of encroachments upon parenting, and it effectively presents the arguments and data that support the author’s defense of parental authority. Schachter also lets many of the key players speak for themselves, enabling the reader to really understand the frustrations of parents. Though the book is intended for a broad audience, and not a scholarly one, Schachter did her homework as she uses interviews with, and studies by, experts on the various topics to support the activism of the parents she profiles.
The chapter on daycare, for example, focuses on the costs imposed by regulations, particularly around food and the swaddling of babies, with the latter being the issue that motivated Schachter herself to research this subject. She documents the ways in which government funding leads to government intervention—including specifying the foods to be served by daycare providers and even that brought from home. Parents who want to send food must abide by highly restrictive rules even if they have strong reason to believe, knowing their own kids better, that food from home is more likely to be eaten and is reasonably nutritious.
Rules are often incredibly detailed, such as the state of New York’s requirement about spacing coat hooks such that outer garments don’t touch each other. We read of studies demonstrating how such regulations raise costs and therefore prices that parents have to pay. We also see evidence that mandating education levels for daycare providers has no connection to good outcomes for kids. Such regulations, again, mostly just make care harder to afford for families of lower or moderate income.
A later chapter looks at the regulation of toys and playgrounds. Between our overprotectiveness of our kids, and the fear of litigation, children’s actually having fun when they play has become the exception, not the rule. The author also discusses the demise of chase games like tag at recess as schools have become increasingly unwilling to expose kids to any risks. She nicely points out that parents need to be consistent: If you want to argue that these regulations and rules are silly, you can’t change your mind and sue when it’s your kid who gets a minor injury from more risky forms of play. Much like the way in which the members of Congress are terrible except for your representative, parents are too willing to exempt themselves and their kids from their general concerns.
Schachter also makes the point that it’s a part of a child’s development to experience real risks and learn what it is like to fail or get hurt. She cites the psychologist Peter Gray’s work on the importance of unsupervised play for how kids learn negotiation, empathy, and cooperation. One of the most valuable insights in the book is one that is present in Skenazy’s book as well: There is no such thing as “perfectly safe.” All activities involve risk, and many of the childhood activities that yield large developmental benefits are risky. Even parental willingness to drive their kids everywhere carries risk—of being in a car accident, and it’s statistically much higher than the risks of most of the childhood activities that schools and governments are trying to limit or ban.
One other strength is that Schachter implicitly recognizes the need to engage in comparative analysis. It’s not enough for proponents of government intervention to point out examples where parents are imperfect. We must then ask whether government would do better. So the fact that parents don’t always make perfect decisions about their children’s nutrition or risk/reward tradeoffs does not by itself imply that government will improve upon matters. In her discussion of overly zealous child protective services agencies and obese kids, Schachter approvingly quotes Elizabeth Ralston: “Unless remaining in the home places a child in grave danger, it is unlikely that foster car is a better alternative for an obese child.” This comparative perspective and the recognition that there are no perfect solutions—longstanding approaches in political economy—are crucial to understanding the flaws of both overprotective parenting and overly intrusive government regulation.
At the end of the day, it is parents who are in the best position to ascertain what risks are worth taking for which benefits when it comes to their kids. They not only have the local and tacit knowledge to do so, they have the right incentives. Many of the parents profiled in the book make exactly this argument, and they are on solid ground in doing so. Governments by their nature are highly risk-averse as they would much rather accept the larger unseen costs of denying kids developmentally necessary forms of play or particular foods than the smaller, but very visible costs of the statistically rare injury or sickness that might result. Costs that aren’t seen won’t have political consequences the way visible ones will; thus politicians, bureaucrats, and regulators will do all they can to avoid the latter even at the large cost of the former. In this way, the incentives facing political actors are diametrically opposed to those of parents who wish to do right by their children.
This last point indicates what’s missing from Schachter’s book: answers to how and why we have ended up with Uncle Sam claiming to know best. Given her purpose and her audience, I don’t see this as a flaw in the book, but rather a set of issues that were beyond her purview. That said, I think it’s helpful to consider them in a quick historical overview that can help us understand how we’ve ended up with “no child left alone.”
At the core of what Schachter has described (and Skenazy before her) is the culmination of the modern sentimentalizing of childhood. For much of human history, childhood as we moderns understand it was largely absent. Families were units of economic production and children were expected to contribute to that effort from an early age. They were also expected, especially boys, to go out into the world and earn their own living, in some cases at 10 or 11 years of age. The idea that children should be sheltered from the outside world until having reached 18 or 22 was virtually non-existent, as few families in a world of poverty could afford to support kids that long without their making any economic contribution to the household.
With the wealth created by capitalism over the last two centuries or so, this has changed. Adult wages are high enough that families can afford to have fewer kids (whose production is no longer needed) and invest more in the ones they do have. The result has been an extension of childhood through the teenage years, and, in recent decades, an extension of adolescence into the 20s.
These same processes, along with medical advances that have reduced infant and child mortality, have brought the sentimentalization of childhood. Parents have always loved their kids, but it was difficult to express that love when resources were scarce and half of children died before age 18. To have a deep emotional investment in your kids was to open yourself to an awful lot of pain. In our own time, in which resources are greater and child mortality much lower, and in which childhood is this sheltered period of innocence, we can afford much more sentimentality about kids.
The consequence is a parental reluctance to take any sort of risk, which in turn has fed the expansion of government. No one is willing to risk harm to a child. The story that Schachter tells is the endpoint of this process. Combine this with broader political changes—especially the reduced constitutional burden of proof on the state to demonstrate the necessity of intervention that overrides individual rights, including long-established parental rights—and you end up with Uncle Sam being the biggest helicopter parent of them all.
As Schachter notes, the Supreme Court has recognized the rights of parents to raise their children “according to the dictates of [their] conscience” since Meyer v. Nebraska in 1923. The Court has also referred to children as not “mere creatures of the State” in Oregon v. Society of Sisters (1925) two years later. Those two cases remain largely good law, and have also served as the basis for other so-called “substantive due process” decisions defending individual liberties, including in Obergefell v. Hodges, which overturned bans on same-sex marriages in 2015. However, there has not been a case where parents have decided to push back against the more recent government intervention Schachter documents, perhaps because subsequent parental rights cases have placed more weight on “the best interest of the child” in limiting the scope of parental rights.
As the kind of nanny state-ism on display in No Child Left Alone continues to grow, perhaps one of Schachter’s “Captain Mommies or Daddies” will take up the fight and challenge some of this unnecessary regulation in court. It would be very interesting to see what the current Supreme Court, with its skepticism about unenumerated rights (except in cases of sexual liberty), would do with assertions of unenumerated rights of parents that it has long recognized. Schachter has done a great service by collecting so many examples of government interference with parenting. One can only hope that there is enough fight in some of the victimized parents, and enough wisdom left in the Court, to reassert the longstanding rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit, free from Uncle Sam’s grasping and incompetent hands.
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