Went to see Dinesh D'Souza's "Death of A Nation" today. I think it was factually believable but I also think he overdid his effort to paint The Democrat Party and Progressivism with a brush that was full of innuendos.
If I were asked to sum up his message it would be: During the Time of Lincoln The Democrat Party favored slavery and today The Democrat Party supports theft.
Not an overly favorable portrayal but probably quite close factually speaking,
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism have a common root in that denial, jealousy, insecurity combine to make an elixir of powerful hate and delusion. (See 1 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Don't sell China short. Their goal is to replace America and they are well on their way . (See 2 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Republicans will regret allowing Democrats to either win and/or steal the mid-year elections. They have the economy going for them, they have a series of accomplishments working for them but do they know how to respond to a mass media that wants them to lose as well as, what I believe will be, a concerted effort to steal the election?
Democrats are delirious over the opportunity of winning The House and will pull out all stops, legal or otherwise. Winning is, and has always been, everything because power trumps what is best for our nation.(See 3 and 3a below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Socialism's free things cost a lot.(See 4 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Germany's Central Bank raps Merkel on her trade with Iran knuckles. (See 5 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1) The Pitiful Roots of Anti-Americanism
By Robert Curry
The anti-Semite is a crank and a bore. However, the anti-Semite has an important psychological and even spiritual advantage over certain other kinds of cranks: he knows that to other people, he is a crackpot. This leaves the door slightly ajar for him to discover that he is one.
Anti-Americanism is anti-Semitism's first cousin, but with an important difference. A person afflicted with this terrible condition is also a crank and a bore, but because anti-Americanism is so widespread both in America and abroad, it is all too easy for the sufferers never to realize they are cranks.
After all, anti-Americanism is the norm among the globalist elites. In his book Anti-Americanism, Jean-François Revel writes that he had "formed [his] opinion about the United States through the filter of the European press, which means my judgment was unfavorable." But Revel wants us to understand that he has learned that anti-Americanism is more than simply a widespread climate of opinion. Instead, he labels it a "psychopathology" and an "obsession."
For Revel, the source of this malady is obvious. America has supplanted Europe, and the elites of Europe resent it. Europe once dominated the world. It no longer does, and the European elites blame America instead of themselves.
Revel believes that the Europeans:
... should force themselves to examine how they have contributed to that [America's] preponderance. It was they, after all, who made the twentieth century the darkest in history; it was they who brought about the two unprecedented cataclysms of the World Wars; and it was they who invented and put into place the two most criminal regimes ever inflicted on the human race – pinnacles of evil and imbecility achieved in a space of less than thirty years.
Revel is saying that obsessing over what's wrong with America helps Europeans ward off such thoughts. Warding off unwelcome thoughts is, after all, the psychological mechanism of blame. The greater the need for denial, the greater the intensity of the obsession.
Anti-Americanism has the same psychological dynamic as anti-Semitism. When the anti-Semite launches into his harangue, we instinctively recoil. We recognize that he is a troubled soul. We understand that he is obsessively tracing the inner contours of a mental cage that exists beyond the reach of rationality.
The mechanism of blame also explains the endemic anti-Americanism in Latin America. Revel turns to Carlos Rangel of Venezuela for an explanation of that variant of the malady:
For Latin Americans, it is an unbearable thought that a handful of Anglo-Saxons, arriving much later than the Spanish and in such a harsh climate that they barely survived the first few winters, would become the foremost power in the world. It would require an inconceivable effort of collective self-analysis for Latin Americans to face up to the fundamental causes of this disparity.
Once again, at the root of the condition is "an unbearable thought" – a thought so unbearable that the necessary "self-analysis" would require "an inconceivable effort."
The insights of Revel and Rangel suggest that the Americans who suffer from anti-Americanism must also be afflicted by an unbearable thought.
What unbearable thought? The answer is ready at hand. The Progressive project has gone from strength to strength politically in America – and everywhere it has brought ruin in its wake. Detroit was once an economic powerhouse, and San Francisco was once America's most beautiful city. Decades of one-party rule according to the Progressive project have wrecked Detroit, and San Francisco is becoming something truly strange, a modern city overwhelmed by human excrement in public places.
Just as the Europeans brought ruin on Europe and the South Americans keep on failing, keep on doing what has not worked and never will, the Progressives persist despite failing again and again the simple tests of common sense.
The Progressives' failure is not a failure to enact their agenda. They have dominated America politically for the past century. FDR gave us really big government, and the federal government has become a scandal of fraud, waste, and abuse – a scandal that even the Big Government Press cannot keep hidden from us. LBJ declared War on Poverty – and that war was lost. Instead of eliminating poverty, the War on Poverty has made poverty more pathological, creating an underclass, often now described as "permanent," living on government handouts. Even the Progressives' anti-Americanism was given free rein with the election of Barack Obama, who shared their obsession with "fundamentally transforming" America. Yet wave after wave of electoral victory has not made American Progressives happy.
Whenever the voters put the Progressives in charge, the result is governmental metastasis and social catastrophe – by necessity. The left is simply wrong about how things work. It is easy to come up with programs that defy common sense. It is also possible to use governmental power to impose those programs on society. But the power of government can't make them work.
Instead of learning from experience, the Progressives keep ramping up their anti-Americanism in order to keep deflecting their unbearable thought that Progressivism does not work. Today, the American left's anti-Americanism has become completely undisguised. Leftists now want to do away with America's borders. What would that mean? It would mean that the American experiment in liberty had failed; it would mean the end of America.
Destructive elements of European culture and politics brought Europe to ruin in the twentieth century, and destructive elements in South American culture and politics have kept South America down. The ascendance of Progressivism in American culture and politics threatens to do the same to America.
Robert Curry serves on the Board of Directors of the Claremont Institute and is the author of Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea from Encounter Books
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2)The Chinese are intent on rehabilitating their old empire. Once Beijing has achieved this lofty goal (which it is closer to achieving than any care to admit), the Chinese hope to displace the United States as the world's dominant power. Many analysts – particularly Western ones – scoff at this notion. Whatever China's ultimate intentions are, it is clear that China intends to radically reshape the world order to benefit the Chinese. This is the nature of international relations.
Looking at the growth of China from its beginning to the present time, one sees that China has ceaselessly expanded from beyond its cradle along the Yellow River to encompass a large chunk of territory in eastern Eurasia. Initially, Chinese expansion emanated outward from the Yellow River area, moving north and west. Slowly, Chinese expansion pivoted and began moving south, toward the ocean. It now stretches from Afghanistan to North Korea.
Matching Capabilities to Intentions
The reason so many China-watchers have been skeptical about China's intention to become a great power – a truly global empire – is that China's capabilities have not been commensurate with such a goal. For most of China's history, the country has been a continental power. China eschewed major military commitments at sea (with the notable exception of Zheng He's Treasure Fleet in the 15th century). The skeptics assume that this will always be the case in China.
In other words, China is a continental power, like Russia. Therefore, China will remain dominant on land and weak at sea. Yet, unlike Russia, China has a long coastline touching highly important waterways. Its wealthiest provinces disproportionately benefit from maritime trade. Besides, the notion that a continental power, like China, could never pivot and become a maritime force is absurd. After all, the United States did just that!
As a settler nation, the United States began its existence as a predominantly continental force. Sure, America had a navy and a long coastline touching the Atlantic Ocean (and it relied heavily on global trade to sustain the country economically). However, from the time of the American War of Independence until the Spanish-American War, the United States was concentrated on expanding – and controlling – the entirety of the North American continent. This was, by definition, a continental policy. Inevitably, the country pivoted and became a naval force used to push out the Spanish Empire, which had long controlled the small island-nation of Cuba to the south of the United States.
What began as a somewhat unbelievable effort to warp the American military away from a continental force – focused on protecting settlers in the frontier – eventuated in the creation of a magnificent navy. The U.S. navy was able to assist in the invasion of Cuba (and the toppling of the Spanish Empire's position in the New World). It also resulted in the United States taking over Spanish colonies in the Philippines – thereby making the United States a key player in the world from then on.
Necessity is the mother of all innovation. The United States believed it had conquered the continent by the close of the 19th century. Rather than simply demobilize its small military force, Washington repurposed it for maritime-heavy operations and began looking farther afield.
This is precisely what the Chinese are doing today. Should Beijing dominate its near abroad, it will turn its gaze toward America's sphere of influence.
Chinese Imperial Ambitions
Where China was once a continental power, Beijing is methodically enhancing the country's naval capabilities. Just like the United States before it, the Chinese naval expansion is meant to displace what Beijing perceives to be a hostile, foreign empire (the United States) supporting an island that has menaced China – since 1949 – from within China's purported sphere of influence. In this instance, Taiwan is to the budding Chinese empire what Cuba in 1898 was to the United States.
Observers are quick to point out that even at its height, the Chinese Empire was only ever a regional power. What few understand is that globalization – and China's sheer size – has led to China becoming a key player in the international system. In fact, since the Sino-Soviet split in the 1970s and the subsequent entente between the United States and China, American money and knowledge has been used to effectively build up China into a major player today.
At one time, the Chinese-American relationship was dubbed "Chimerica." Ever since the 2008 Recession, however, it appears as though the two groups have suffered a divorce (or at least a separation). As old rivalries are inflamed, many soothe themselves with notions that China can never be a threat to the pre-eminent United States.
It is true that China is staring down some major problems: demographic woes, slowing economic growth rates, fallout from an overly centralized government. However, with the exception of demographic woes, China has long suffered through cycles of stagnating economic growth and political turbulence.
Somehow, China has persisted over the centuries. China's return to the world stage as not only a great power, but potentially the greatest power should rouse even the most apathetic American to the nature and extent of the threat.
Unfortunately, like the Spanish Empire in 1898, the United States is ignoring significant threats to itself.
Toward the Chinese Century?
One thing is clear: the Asia-Pacific is a key component of the world economy, and America must have a serious presence there. For decades, China has indicated its intention to harm American interests while empowering itself. That alone is reason to build up America's presence in the Asia-Pacific and to align other states in the region against China.
We continue telling ourselves that China's military threat will never materialize the way some (like myself) fear. However, at each moment, the Chinese threat matures. Westerners said we could impart our industrial capabilities onto Beijing because the West would spearhead the next "knowledge" economy. Not only did the Chinese absorb our industry (that we willingly gave them in exchange for trinkets), but China also (in the last decade) began pivoting to dominate the knowledge sector as well – which it is doing.
My friends on Wall Street maintain that the Chinese economy will implode. Maybe. We're all still waiting for this to happen. Even if China's economy did implode, that would not mitigate the threat. It would merely change it. After all, an unstable, decentralized China riven with nationalism is possibly even more dangerous than a united quasi-communist one.
For the first time in decades, the United States is competing against a rival whom, in many respects, it has fallen behind. First, American leaders must fully acknowledge the threat. Then the U.S. must move to do what the Spanish failed to do to the rising United States: challenge it early enough to head off any real threat.
Time is not on our side.
Brandon J. Weichert is a geopolitical analyst who manages The Weichert Report: World News Done Right and is a contributor at The American Spectator, as well as a contributing editor at American Greatness. His writings on national security and Congress have appeared at Real Clear Politics, Space News, and HotAir.com. He has been featured on CBS News.com, the BBC, and the Christian Science Monitor. Brandon is a former congressional staffer who holds an M.A. in statecraft and national security affairs from the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. and is currently working on his doctorate in international relations.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3)
Ohio's tight race shows Democrats are ready to do battle everywhere
Yet Trump is also the millstone who may sink Republicans this fall. In special election after special election, Democrats have proven they can win or compete aggressively on turf Republicans are used to dominating.
Doug Jones and Conor Lamb weren’t outliers. They were harbingers of a blue wave that will, in one form or another, crash on the shore this November.
On Tuesday night, Danny O’Connor, a Democrat, ran in a virtual tie with Republican Troy Balderson in a special election for Ohio’s 12th congressional district. Trump, like past Republican presidential candidates, won the district comfortably. Pat Tiberi, who vacated the seat to take a lucrative gig with a business group, is a Republican.
Who wins and who loses is almost beside the point. Republicans, once more, had to expend tremendous money and effort (outspending the opposition) on a district that should easily be theirs. O’Connor is not particularly remarkable as a candidate, but like all Democrats running in a high-profile races now, he is an avatar of the times.
Trump horrifies Democrats and left-leaning voters. They can mobilize in typically low turnout elections, showing up in ways they never did when Barack Obama was president.
This is what anyone on the right should fear. Trump’s hateful and ludicrous administration has energized Democrats in a remarkable way. Republicans hold fewer and fewer safe seats. Towns and counties that swung dramatically into Trump’s column in 2016 are ready to come right back.
In some sense, this is what politics in America is now. The pendulum swings in faster and more disorienting ways. America can choose both an eloquent, African American law professor and a race-baiting reality TV star for president in the span of eight years.
Republicans rose to power on the strength of wrath toward Obama. Now, it is the Democrats’ turn to transmogrify fear and hate into electoral success. Their bogeyman is actually suited to the role, of course – Obama was nothing more than a center-left president who was demonized by those who could not stand a black man living in the White House.
Trump is so much more. As O’Connor has shown, Democrats are ready to do battle everywhere. The 12th district is a medley of affluent suburbia and dying manufacturing towns.
O’Connor’s performance is another data point for Democratic confidence.
The hard questions will only come after. Questions about the future of the Democratic party, or what it really stands for today, can be papered over for now.
The hard questions will only come after. Questions about the future of the Democratic party, or what it really stands for today, can be papered over for now.
There is a bigoted strongman in the White House to unite against, after all.
Trump is the ultimate antidote to apathy and nihilism. Everything does matter. A country is at stake.
Trump is the ultimate antidote to apathy and nihilism. Everything does matter. A country is at stake.
Democracy, once optional for many, has assumed its rightful place as something to be cherished, protected and fought over. A Democratic House would be a crucial check on Trump, and the first step toward unraveling this nightmare.
Regardless of last night, Balderson and O’Connor are likely to face off again in
November. This showdown will matter.
November. This showdown will matter.
Since you’re here…
… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.
The Guardian is editorially independent, meaning we set our own agenda. Our journalism is free from commercial bias and not influenced by billionaire owners, politicians or shareholders. No one edits our Editor. No one steers our opinion. This is important because it enables us to give a voice to the voiceless, challenge the powerful and hold them to account. It’s what makes us different to so many others in the media, at a time when factual, honest reporting is critical.
If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps to support it, our future
3a
There is a bigoted strongman in the White House to unite against, after all.
Trump is the ultimate antidote to apathy and nihilism. Everything does matter. A country is at stake.
Democracy, once optional for many, has assumed its rightful place as something to be cherished, protected and fought over. A Democratic House would be a crucial check on Trump, and the first step toward unraveling this nightmare.
Regardless of last night, Balderson and O’Connor are likely to face off again in November. This showdown will matter.
Since you’re here…
… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.The Guardian is editorially independent, meaning we set our own agenda. Our journalism is free from commercial bias and not influenced by billionaire owners, politicians or shareholders. No one edits our Editor. No one steers our opinion. This is important because it enables us to give a voice to the voiceless, challenge the powerful and hold them to account. It’s what makes us different to so many others in the media, at a time when factual, honest reporting is critical.
If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps to support it, our future would be much more secure.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
4)
- EDITORIALS: Investor's Biz Daily
Democratic Socialism: Who Knew That 'Free' Could Cost So Much?
Socialism: Since the Democratic Party took a turn for the worse toward so-called democratic socialism, the party's leading lights have laid the promises on pretty thick. Free Medicare for all! Guaranteed income! Guaranteed jobs! Subsidized housing! Free college! Universal pre-school! Wow, and all for free.
Well, not exactly. In a devastating piece that appeared on the left-of-center web site Vox (to its credit), Manhattan Institute fellow Brian Riedl went through the simple math of what free actually costs. It's a lot.
It's not just the free aspect, but the fact that the democratic socialists have made so many promises that must be paid for that will make it so tough to swallow for most voters.
Riedl looked at the 10-year costs of all the various promises made by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other self-described democratic socialists. He was as generous as could be in his estimates, often accepting the democratic socialists' cost estimate even when it was patently and absurdly too low. It's quite a laundry-list of promises with enormous costs: "Free college" ($807 billion); Social Security expansion ($188 billion); single-payer health care ($32 trillion); guaranteed jobs at $15 per hour plus benefits ($6.8 trillion); infrastructure ($1 trillion); student loan debt forgiveness ($1.4 trillion).
Net cost: about $42.5 trillion over 10 years, give or take a few hundred billion. To paraphrase the late, great Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen: "A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
As it is, current federal estimates expect about $44 trillion in tax revenues over that same period, with a deficit of roughly $12.4 trillion. Remember: All this democratic socialist spending comes on top of what we're already spending.
Long-term, the fiscal picture grows progressively (forgive the term) worse.
"The 30-year projected tab for these programs is even more staggering," wrote Riedl. "New proposals costing $218 trillion, on top of an $84 trillion baseline deficit driven by Social Security, Medicare and the resulting interest costs."
Today, Riedl notes, total federal spending typically swings between 18% and 22% of GDP. But with the democratic socialist agenda in place, it "would immediately soar past 40% of GDP on its way to nearly 50% within three decades." If you include state and local government, the total cost for this federal fantasia would equal 60% of GDP — more than any country in Europe.
Even after massive cuts in other programs, such as slashing defense by half, or adding in phantom savings from supposed cuts in state health spending and anti-poverty programs, you still come up $34 trillion short over 10 years.
To raise $34 trillion, Riedl calculates, would require "seizing roughly 100% of all corporate profits as well as 100% of all family wage income and pass-though business income above the thresholds of $90,000 (single) or $150,000 (married), and absurdly assuming they all continue working."
Or, he said, you could go to a VAT tax — a national sales tax on all goods and services. But it would have to be huge: a tax of 87% on everything you buy. Oh, and by the way, that still doesn't pay for the $12.4 trillion deficit that's already estimated and that we discussed above. So you'd need even more taxes.
Those number are scary enough. But we're not even raising the issues of: a.) massive cost overruns in these programs, which are inevitable; or, b.), whether these programs will work as described or instead end up ruining our free-market economy.
Not surprisingly, in public socialists say they won't ruin free-market capitalism. They'll save it!
Wrong again. As Meagan Day, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, wrote (also in Vox): "Here's the truth: In the long run, democratic socialists want to end capitalism. And we want to do that by pursuing a reform agenda today in an effort to revive a politics focused on class hierarchy and inequality in the United States."
Americans should know that these are the very ideas that have destroyed the economies of the USSR, Cuba, Nicaragua, most of Africa, North Korea and, as we're now seeing, Venezuela. And they're not "democratic" at all. They're just socialism.
Danger: Socialism Ahead
The bigger point is, these utopian ideas are not fiscally sane. And we mean that literally. They are a bizarre fantasy that should be discarded immediately by any reasonable person interested in an economically prosperous future.
That some believe that replacing capitalism with socialism makes you better off shows the profound failure of our nation's education system. Because it's something that has never happened in the history of mankind. And young people, who are among socialism's most ardent fans, don't seem to even know this.
The great economist, social thinker and professor Walter Williams recently summed up the struggle between capitalism and socialism: "Capitalism doesn't do well in popularity polls, despite the fact that it has eliminated many of mankind's worst problems, such as pestilence and gross hunger and poverty."
To vote for socialism is to vote for national bankruptcy, a loss of freedom, a lower standard of living and an end to innovation. And be forewarned: As Venezuelans, Zimbabweans and Nicaraguans are now discovering, once socialists control things, they never give up power peacefully.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
5)
|
No comments:
Post a Comment