“How to solve the unsolvable”

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There are some problems which might not have a solution.

Israel is at the stage in the conflict in which, traditionally, international pressure mounts to such a pitch that Israel has to stop its operations against Hamas. This is what happened in 2009, what happened in 2012 and what looks set to happen again now. The international community recognises that Israel needs to stop rockets being fired from Gaza, allows the state a couple of weeks of mild support or mild protest and then comes down heavily after the operations bring the inevitable civilian and terrorist casualties. There is a pattern to this. And each time the exigencies of the political cycle ensure that the problem will return in exactly the same guise 18 months or so later.

But somebody must think about what the long-term solution to all this might be.  Ever since Israel withdrew from the Gaza in 2005 and the Bush administration pushed for elections which resulted in the election of Hamas (who then consolidated their win with a violent coup) the world has been faced with this seemingly insoluble problem. Yet part of its insolubility is the world’s continued pretence that this is in fact a problem capable of being solved.

Hamas and their supporters are calling for a stopping of what they call the ‘siege’ or ‘blockade’ on Gaza. Of course the restrictions on materials getting into Gaza could indeed be lifted if it were not for the certainty that Hamas would use the opportunity to bring more munitions into Gaza even than they can with the ‘blockade’ in place.  The long-term effects of a normalising of trade with Gaza would be a Gaza armed with better and more efficient weaponry than ever. Calls for a ‘lifting of the blockade’ therefore come from people who are either ignorant of Hamas’s behaviour or from people who know Hamas’s behaviour, like it and would like to assist them.

The prospect of Israel ‘re-occupying’ Gaza is off the table. There is little or no public or political desire in Israel to have to control an area seething with such extremism and antagonism. Ordinarily a long-term solution would be for Egypt to re-assert control of Gaza which they asserted fifty years ago. Except that the Egyptians know the problems that exist in Gaza as well as the Israelis do, and they no more want to govern the people of the area than the Israelis. They, too, know that the destabilisation of their entire society is not just possible but likely should they allow Gaza into their borders.

So nobody wants to ‘own’ Gaza and Hamas seems for the time-being to be utterly unwilling to sublimate their priority of attacking Israel in order to better govern and provide for (with international assistance) the people nominally in their care.

So what can be done?  If you ask the best policy-makers, the finest minds in the region from any and all sides, the same shrug or despair emerges at this point. The answer which almost everybody who has looked at the situation is agreed upon is that there is not at the moment any solution to this problem. They follow this up with the inevitable hope that at some stage in the future this fact will change. But it is important to keep in mind what this change consists of. Any long-term solution to the Gaza problem is incumbent on a stage-by-stage, gradual improvement in, and normalisation of, Gaza. It involves younger Gazans growing up without being imbued with the hate which demands they make assault on the Jewish state their political and religious priority. Anybody who looks at this must also realise that this place – if it can be reached – will not be reached for many years.  Perhaps ten years at a minimum. Almost certainly far more. And what makes the timescale worse is that there is no sign that Hamas or the Palestinian leadership in Gaza in general are doing anything remotely like starting this process.

This, then, is a problem for which there is no immediate solution.  A bleak fact, but one that the international community would do well to realise.  Because only by doing so can they – or anyone – have a realistic expectation of how, if ever, this terrible situation can be resolved.  Accepting the limitations of the world is often an unpleasant thing to do, but it is a better strategy than pretending these unpalatable facts away.

Throw the Bums Out and the Quality of the American Electorate

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In a recent broadcast of Fox News’ newly-launched panel show, Outnumbered, the five panelists discussed recent opinion polls measuring congressional job approval.  And although the four female panelists… Sandra Smith, Harris Faulkner, Kirsten Powers, and Kimberly Guilfoyle… are not only much easier to look at than the dowdy and tiresome Obama cheerleaders on ABC’s The View, they are, individually and collectively, light-years brighter.

It is even fair to say that the token liberal on the panel, Kirsten Powers, is a rarity among liberals and Democrats… she is thoughtful and almost always fair-minded.  Unlike the ladies of The View, she is not an ideological lapdog for Democrats and the far left.  However, having tossed out that paean to the ladies of Outnumbered, it is also fair to say that they did no better at dealing with the subject of congressional job approval than any other group of talking heads.

In the course of their discussion they cited several recent polls.  Among the congressional job approval polls cited were CNS News at 12%, Fox News at 16%, The Economist at 10%, and Gallup at 15%.  They also cited a Field Poll which showed that some 44% of voters approve of the job their own congressman is doing, while 33% disapprove.  But in the unkindest cut of all, demonstrating how poorly congressional Republicans advocate for Republican principles, one poll showed that 46% said it made no difference which party controlled Congress.

But these results take on real meaning only when we look inside the numbers.  Taking a closer look at voter attitudes toward their own congressman, 57% of registered Democrats said they were likely to vote to reelect their current member of Congress, while only 33% of Republicans would vote to reelect their current member.  What this seems to indicate is that Republicans, in general, are far more thoughtful, far more discriminating, and far less likely to be influenced by “cult of personality” than Democrats.

These numbers also tell us is that people generally have a low opinion of Congress as a whole… always willing to speak ill of those who represent others… but a generally favorable attitude toward their own member, whoever he or she might be and regardless of his or her ideological stance.  Why?  Apparently because they are anxious to reconfirm what they consider to be their own perceptiveness in their voting booth decisions, while those who elected all those other dolts are dumber than bricks.  The only fair way to rate the Congress would be to add up the winning margins of every member and divide the total by 435 for House members and 100 for Senators.

Yes, it is fair to say that Congress does a very poor job of writing the laws and looking after the interests of the people, but that’s not due to any serious flaw in the way Congress is constituted. The principle shortcoming of the Congress is to be found in the quality of its leadership.  To prove the point, I might mention just four names:  Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Nancy Pelosi.  Need I say more?

In Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi we have leaders who are truly evil and who care about nothing beyond what is good for the Democratic Party and its candidates.  Their only real concern is that, if the ship of state is to sink beneath the waves, they insist on being at the helm when it happens.  In John Boehner and Mitch McConnell we have two well intentioned men, neither of whom have the foggiest notion of how to deal with the truly evil people on the Democrat side of the aisle.  Taken together, these mutually incompatible characterizations spell nothing but total gridlock.

Can it be fixed?  Yes, Congress can be fixed, but only in the event of a politically astute and well-informed electorate.  So long as 57% of Democrats believe that their own representatives are acting in the best interests of the country and deserve to be reelected, the problems of governance that we now experience can never be fixed.  If Democrats continue to believe that a man the caliber of Hank Johnson (D-GA) deserves to be in Congress, then there is little hope for us.  (It was Johnson who worried openly in a public hearing that the Pacific island of Guam might capsize if the U.S. Navy stationed an additional 8,000 Marines on one side of the island.)

But time is of the essence because reform is possible only so long as we still have a majority of voters who are property owners and/or wage earners, but it won’t be easy because a major portion of the Democrat Party base is comprised of uninformed non-producers, under-achievers, and the disinterested… those who are not property owners or who live off the labors of others.

Three significant reforms are sorely needed: First, we must amend our criminal laws to require mandatory prison time for those who engage in vote fraud.  Second, the right to vote should be limited only to those who are property owners and taxpayers.  And finally, before they are handed a ballot, voters should be required to score at least 60% on a simple ten-question exam, with topics chosen at random from current affairs and from the list of 100 questions used in examining immigrants who apply for American citizenship.

But can we expect Democrats to ever agree to stricter penalties for vote fraud?  Not likely.  Vote fraud is, and always has been, the “bread and butter” of Democratic politics.  In fact, Democrats are so wedded to the notion of vote fraud, so opposed to requiring photo IDs at polling places, so addicted to double and triple voting, that they would be unwilling to adopt a system in which voters would be required to dip a “pinkie” into a vial of indelible ink after voting, much like the  proud first-time voters in emerging democracies of the Third World.  So what does that tell us?

Next, we need to take a serious look at who is allowed to vote and who is not.  It makes no sense at all to have those who live off the public dole to participate in the election of the politicians who then vote to create bigger and better free lunches.  And while some may believe that voting is and always has been a universal right, such is not the case.  During the early years of the republic, only white males who owned at least 50 acres of land or had taxable income were allowed to vote.  Un-propertied men and women, slaves, and ex-slaves were prohibited from voting.  However, by the mid-19th century, most white males were allowed to vote, regardless of income or property ownership, and in the ensuing years the right to vote was further expanded.

The 15th Amendment (1870), extended voting rights to all citizens regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude;” the 19th Amendment (1920) extended voting rights to all female citizens; the 23rd Amendment (1961) extended the right to vote in presidential elections to residents of Washington, DC; the 24th Amendment (1964) struck down poll taxes and other taxes as barriers to voting; and the 26th Amendment (1971) extended voting rights to 18-year-olds.

Article VI, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution states that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”  Instead, it leaves the question of voter qualifications to the states to decide.  In short, the right to vote is not an explicit right under the Constitution.  States may deny the right to vote for reasons other than those explicitly addressed in the Constitution and subsequent amendments.  In addition to barring non-taxpayers and non-property owners, the Congress should also deny voting rights forever to those who obtain citizenship after illegally sneaking across our borders or by overstaying a visa.

Finally, it stretches credulity to suggest that the vote of an individual who cannot demonstrate the most rudimentary knowledge of current affairs or of the U.S. Constitution, should be valued as highly as the vote of the best-informed and most knowledgeable citizens.

The “man in the street” interviews popularized by late-night comedian Jay Leno and Fox News producer Jesse Watters tell us everything we need to know about the quality of the American electorate.  If we were fortunate enough to have a better educated and more informed electorate we would have a far more effective Congress and, once again, a president who would merit the respect and the admiration of the American people.

The U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service administers a test to all those who wish to become U.S. citizens.  The test contains 100 questions from which questions are chosen at random and 60% is a passing grade.  A typical multiple choice test might appear as follows:

  1. What was the purpose of the Declaration of Independence?
  2. What are the first three words of the U.S. Constitution that define self-governance?
  3. What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
  4.  How many justices serve on the United States Supreme Court?
  5.  Who served as President of the U.S. during the Great Depression and World War II?
  6.  What nation is the only functioning democracy in the Middle East?
  7.  The Taliban is a radical Islamist group operating largely in which country?
  8.  Who currently serves as Attorney General of the United States?
  9.  How many time zones cover the U.S. from New York to California?
  10.  Which major river is the longest river in the United States?

Ten questions of this caliber, chosen at random and posed in a multiple choice format on a touch-screen monitor, could be used to screen out those with an insufficient knowledge of current affairs and our system of government to merit the privilege of voting.  Taking such a test would take less than two minutes per voter and would not in any way impede the voting process.

If we’re going to get serious about “throwing the bums out,” maybe we should begin with voters who cannot demonstrate that they deserve to be seen as members of an “informed” electorate.

Common Core is tool to produce a “Commie Corps” by Rabbi Aryeh Spero

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Barack Obama declared six years ago that the ultimate goal of his presidency was to fundamentally transform America. This has been not only his agenda, but for decades the goal of America’s political left wing. To transform a country one must first transform its people. Transformation takes place by changing the values by which people live and by changing their self-perception of who they are and what they are supposed to become.

Common Core does exactly that.

Common Core is to education what Obamacare is to healthcare. The purpose of both programs is to take away one’s individual choice, be it regarding healthcare or local influence on education. Both programs are transformative since they assault the most fundamental American liberties, the freedom to choose one’s doctor and medical remedies, and the freedom to educate one’s children by local values. Both programs give federal bureaucrats control over these most important aspects of life. They disenfranchise us as patients and parents. Controlling the lives of “those below” is the animating principle of Leftism and the elitists who wish to do the controlling.

A communist society takes choice away from the people and places it in the hands of a centralized apparatus removed from the people. In other words, it deprives the individual his liberty. Through centralization, the individual loses not only his liberty but is socially engineered to think a certain way and act in conformity and lock-step with how the ruling elite want its new underclass to act. Common Core seeks to create a common-ness among people, what the Communists refer to as “the masses.” America’s students are being groomed today to be future members of the “Commie Corps,” advocates and robots of a trans-individual system.

Americans have succeeded because of our special Judeo-Christian outlook on life, local control, and the confidence in a rugged individualism that inspired us to be the best we can be. Common Core changes all that. Our children will be trained by educators not to be rugged but common; not masters of our own fate but subjects of a ruling bureaucracy; not the possessors of a unique Judeo-Christian outlook but proponents of a transnational, socialist worldview.

One of the hallmarks and goals of socialist Marxism is to strip a country of its unique culture, history, attitudes, and self-perception. The first order of business for the Russian communists was to denude Russia of its Russo-ism as did Mao when stripping his country of its unique Chinese heritage. Thus, throughout the curriculum of Common Core, American heroes are minimized and castigated, our history maligned, our historic values seen as an affront to multiculturalism. Much of Common Core is an indictment of America. It indicts so as to remove.

Too often far more information is supplied about Islam and too little about Christianity and Judaism. For many in the ruling clique, the Biblical religions and Testaments of Christianity and Judaism are passé and the problem while Islam and its Koran are seen as the new universal religion requiring our veneration. President Obama and Hillary Clinton epitomize this attitude of deference, often referring in their remarks to the “Holy Koran” and “the Prophet,” majestic references they rarely extend to Christianity or Judaism.

By transforming the values of our children, as well as their perception of themselves as individuals, the ruling elites will be able to transform America completely and create transnational citizens, pupils educated to conform to the social engineering from above. Common Core is the ultimate vehicle in erasing excellence for mediocrity and individuality for conformity. Common Core reflects the arrogance of the social engineers and their condescension and little regard for their “subjects” below. Common Core is the thief that robs individual students of their potential.

Because of Obamacare, many outstanding doctors are leaving the practice of medicine. Understandably, they wish not to be pre-programmed, mere medical clerks of the government… as if they were postal workers. It is an affront to the creativity, integrity, and the personal spirit they were trained to give to their craft. Similarly, we now hear of outstanding teachers who are leaving our schools and teaching due to the imposition of Common Core.

As with the students, their individuality is being snatched away through mandates of a new centralized education system. They will no longer be able to teach in a manner that reflects their innate talents, their unique intuition and experience, their personal insight. As with anything socialist and Marxist, the personal is crushed. It extinguishes the fire in the provider and levels and deadens the spirit in the receiver.

Common Core will stifle the potential of our youngsters and make them much too common. It will transform America by making our would-be heroes and achievers into but robots of the Commie Corps.

Rabbi Spero is a theologian and social and political commentator. He is author of Push Back: Reclaiming Our American Judeo-Christian Spirit, and was a pulpit rabbi for almost forty years.

EDITORS NOTE: A version of this article was published in The Blaze.

Saint Thomas Aquinas on Immigration: Man’s relations with foreigners are twofold, peaceful and hostile

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Saint Thomas Aquinas was a Roman Catholic priest who authored the Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles, which shaped the Catholic Church and its philosophies for centuries. His teachings are still influential. But is the Catholic Church following his teachings on the issue of immigration.

What would Saint Thomas Aquinas say to Pope Francis and the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops about immigration?

summa Theological book coverIn the column “What Does Saint Thomas Say About Immigration?” John Horvat II asks the same question and provides an answer by quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas. Horvat notes, “Immigration is a modern problem and so some might think that the medieval Saint Thomas would have no opinion about the problem. And yet, he does. One has only to look in his masterpiece, the Summa Theologica, in the second part of the first part, question 105, article 3 (I-II, Q. 105, Art. 3). There one finds his analysis based on biblical insights that can add to the national debate. They are entirely applicable to the present.”

Saint Thomas: “Man’s relations with foreigners are twofold: peaceful, and hostile: and in directing both kinds of relation the Law contained suitable precepts.”

Commentary: In making this affirmation, Saint Thomas affirms that not all immigrants are equal. Every nation has the right to decide which immigrants are beneficial, that is, “peaceful,” to the common good. As a matter of self-defense, the State can reject those criminal elements, traitors, enemies and others who it deems harmful or “hostile” to its citizens.

The second thing he affirms is that the manner of dealing with immigration is determined by law in the cases of both beneficial and “hostile” immigration. The State has the right and duty to apply its law.

Saint Thomas: “For the Jews were offered three opportunities of peaceful relations with foreigners. First, when foreigners passed through their land as travelers. Secondly, when they came to dwell in their land as newcomers. And in both these respects the Law made kind provision in its precepts: for it is written (Exodus 22:21): ’Thou shalt not molest a stranger [advenam]’; and again (Exodus 22:9): ’Thou shalt not molest a stranger [peregrino].’”

Commentary: Here Saint Thomas acknowledges the fact that others will want to come to visit or even stay in the land for some time. Such foreigners deserved to be treated with charity, respect and courtesy, which is due to any human of good will. In these cases, the law can and should protect foreigners from being badly treated or molested.

Saint Thomas: “Thirdly, when any foreigners wished to be admitted entirely to their fellowship and mode of worship. With regard to these a certain order was observed. For they were not at once admitted to citizenship: just as it was law with some nations that no one was deemed a citizen except after two or three generations, as the Philosopher says (Polit. iii, 1).”

Commentary: Saint Thomas recognizes that there will be those who will want to stay and become citizens of the lands they visit. However, he sets as the first condition for acceptance a desire to integrate fully into what would today be considered the culture and life of the nation.

A second condition is that the granting of citizenship would not be immediate. The integration process takes time. People need to adapt themselves to the nation. He quotes the philosopher Aristotle as saying this process was once deemed to take two or three generations. Saint Thomas himself does not give a timeframe for this integration, but he does admit that it can take a long time.

Read Horvat’s entire analysis of immigration through the eyes of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

RELATED ARTICLE: Gutiérrez: ‘I Think We Can Get 3 or 4, Maybe Even 5 Million People’ Amnesty via Executive Action (+video)

Obama Executive Order once again attacks Christian Organizations — Will the Catholic Bishops stand up to him?

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Obama launches a new attack on Christian organizations by signing yet another Executive Order that forces them to hire homosexuals!

The $17 trillion question:

Are the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the leaders of the Holy Catholic Church going to stand up to King Obama this time around and have every single Catholic institution file a law suit against this liberal administration or are we just going to continue to roll over and take our orders from the “Liberal sees” in the White House instead of the “Holy See” in the Vatican?

Hope all is well as I truly mean that. Seriously – “Hope all is well”…With the way this world is going today – when was the last time that “all was well”? It’s almost impossible to watch the news or read the newspaper in the mornings with a positive attitude as there are more conflicts going on around the world in this day and age than I have seen in my 56 years. I honestly think that if we were to combine all of the conflicts, violence and wars going on all over the world today and put them all together as One Big War – it would be equivalent to a World War III…It’s that bad and we have grown almost immune to it. Nothing phases us anymore. Even in our own country – where we fight the greatest war of all – “OBAMA’S WAR AGAINST CHRISTIANS”.

Friends, when the President of the Free World is able to use his dictatorial powers at free will – with the incompetent Congress scratching their heads at King Obama’s every move – why do we even have a government in the “Land of the Free”? Who is governing what? What is governing who? Where are the checks and balances? Why are there so many checks that don’t balance? Why do we have a House of Representatives? Why do we have a Senate? What does the term “judiciary” mean? How come we had never heard the term “Executive Order” until the “Executive & Almighty One” put his feet up on his desk in our White House back in January of 2009″?

And, if you have not heard the latest coming from the “Gay President” – (there is nothing wrong with saying that because in Obama’s world – anything goes and he is proud of that) – get ready for yet another “Executive Order” coming from the “left-handed” one. Beyond excruciating. Beyond surreal. Beyond the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution has no bearing in the way King Kenya runs our country. It hasn’t for the past 6 years…and counting…That pen and cell phone have wreaked havoc on our nation, our unborn, our Christian communities, our beloved citizens…

And, while Obama should be taking care of the more critical “world crisis” issues all around the world and even at our own borders (where a humanitarian fiasco is about to take place with the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants coming over from the Mexican border) – while watching former KGB wild man, Vladimir Putin, do as he pleases in shooting down airliners as if it were a “Russian roulette” game – Obama has no clue as to what is transpiring in Russia and the Ukraine – let alone, the volatile Middle East, even among our own ally, Israel, and their relentless struggle against the Palestinians. Does he have a clue of what is going on in Syria and Egypt? How about the 276 Nigerian young ladies who disappeared months ago at the hands of Boko Haram in his home continent of Africa?

No, Obama thinks it is more important to continue to attack the Catholic Church and the Christian organizations in our country by signing on more Executive Orders to try our patience and to tick off all the wholesome Christian faithful in this country. Obama seems to be focused on this issue as he knows that he only has a little more than two years left on his 8-year contract to try to turn our beloved United States of America into the “Divided States of Obama” – his twisted version of Sodom and Gomorrah. So, where are the President of the United States’ priorities at when so much conflict and strife is going on around the world? And, is signing a “Gay Executive Order” a priority in the Home of the Brave while the rest of the world is burning?

So, without further adieu, please take a look at the this article from our good friends at Catholic Vote as Joshua Mercer tells it like it is. This latest Executive Order by King Obama demands that all Federal Contractors and Subcontractors grant special treatment based on “sexual orientation” and “gender equity”. Truly amazing and absolutely unfair to every Christian organization – including the Holy Catholic Church – that does NOT believe in the immoral act of sodomy and the homosexual lifestyle. Forcing a conservative and religious organization like Catholic Charities to hire homosexual employees while knowing that it is against their religious beliefs (based on Holy Scripture) – is as blatant an act as I have ever seen. And, if the USCCB, our Church leaders and wonderful organizations like Catholic Charities, do not stand up for their religious freedoms like the bold and courageous Hobby Lobby did against the liberal Obama administration (and won) – once again, we can all kiss our Holy Rosaries a fond farewell and continue to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet over and over and over again until all 50 states in our beloved United States all turn gay…19 and counting…

May God give the USCCB the intestinal fortitude to instruct every single Catholic institution in the United States to file a lawsuit against this administration.

May all Christian organizations in the United States stand up for their religious liberty and freedoms and take this administration head on!

IN GOD WE MUST!!!
CV
Dear CV Friend, 

The Supreme Court has already rebuked Obama twice on religious liberty. 

But that isn’t stopping this president from launching another attack on religious liberty. 

This time, Obama is using the purse strings of the federal government to marginalize employers with religious convictions. 

President Obama today signed an executive order which demands that all federal contractors and subcontractors grant special treatment based on “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” 

The executive order signed by Obama thankfully preserves an exemption put in place by President George W. Bush which allows religious employers the freedom to favor employees of a certain religion in making hiring decisions. So under the new rules, a religious university could not fire a teacher for being a lesbian, but could fire her because she’s not a Catholic. 

Legal experts say that Obama’s new executive order will launch a flood of lawsuits against employers who have deeply-held convictions that certain kinds of sexual behavior is inconsistent with their moral or religious beliefs. 

The executive order, expected to take full effect in 2015, will affect 24,000 companies employing approximately 28 million American workers, or about one-fifth of the country’s workforce. 

President Obama could have easily issued this executive order for LGBT employees while maintaining a robust exemption for religious liberty. 

Once again, Obama has shown his strong hostility to religious expression in American life. In his mind, we have only “freedom to worship” inside the four walls of our church. But we dare not practice “freedom of religion” where we take our faith to the public square. If we do that, Obama believes that we must also sacrifice any religious principles out of sync with the federal government. 

In Obama’s mind, it’s ok if you go to Church on Sunday, but don’t you dare act like a Christian any other day of the week. 

Joshua Mercer 
Political Director

When the Lamps Went Out: The Great War and the death of liberal England by Alastair Paynter

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This summer marks the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. One hundred years ago, in late July of the hot summer of 1914, Europe ignited. The significance of the war for those living today, especially those interested in individual liberty, cannot be overstated.

The four-year conflict left nine million men dead, governments toppled, and ancient monarchies replaced by unstable republics. The United States had become directly active in European affairs for the first time. The twentieth century, Mussolini’s “century of the state,” was well and truly underway.

By modern standards, the British state prior to 1914 was rather small. In the nineteenth century, the ability of the government to effectively regulate and enforce was limited, not only by widespread support for a general attitude of laissez faire, but also by the lack of a bureaucratic administration that could grease the cogs of a centralized state in the manner of, say, Bismarck’s Germany.

This is not to say that a slow aggrandizement of the State was not occurring. Successive enlargements of the franchise, in 1867 and 1884, and the increasing popularity of interventionist political philosophies chipped away at the laissez-faire state of the mid-Victorian years. The transformation of the Liberal Party from actual (classical) liberalism into social liberalism (better described as social democracy) had been completed under the leadership of Herbert Asquith. Slowly, a new Britain was coming into being. The vast British Empire was growing vaster still, as was the revenue required to support it. Even so, at home, Britain was still a remarkably liberal place. Relative to the citizens of most countries in the world, the Englishman could still consider himself free from excessive State interference.

Nowhere, perhaps, is the ensuing change more famously chronicled than in A. J. P. Taylor’s English History 1914–1945, where the historian noted that “until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman” (see chapter 1). As to the particulars of life, Taylor notes that the Englishman could live where and as he liked, without any sort of number or identity card. He could travel abroad without any sort of passport or permit, exchange his money for any currency without any limits and buy anything from anywhere. Conversely, a foreigner could reside in England without a permit and without having to notify the police. No military service was required and the demands of national defense could be ignored. Although some householders could be called upon for jury service, “only those helped the state who wished to do so.” Less than 8 percent of the national income was consumed by taxes. State intervention was limited and existed in the capacity of attempting to prevent the sale of contaminated food and the spread of infectious diseases, imposing some safety limits on factories, limiting the number of hours that men and women could work in some industries and attempting to provide an education for children up until the age of 13, as well as those social liberal measures outlined above.

The essential change wrought upon life by the war was one of the relationship between individual person and the State. The people became, in Taylor’s words, “active citizens … shaped by orders from above.” This meant service to the state, rather than the pursuit of one’s own interests. Five million men were conscripted for the war effort. Domestically, the age of central planning had begun. Food was limited and regulated by the State, pub licensing hours were limited, and beer was watered down. Movement and work were restricted and regulated. As news became controlled, so did every part of the minutiae of life, from the brightness of street lights to the time on the clock. Taylor made perhaps the most important conclusion the historian could draw from this strange transformation:

The state established a hold over its citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the second world war was again to increase. The history of the English state and of the English people merged for the first time.

Nearly all wars serve to aggrandize the State. The First World War just did so to a degree that was hitherto unprecedented. Some did attempt to halt or at least slow the path to destruction. Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, the Fifth Marquess of Lansdowne, published a letter calling for a negotiated peace with Germany. Rather more farsighted than many in government at the time, he thought the prolongation of the war would “spell ruin for the civilised world.” In this endeavor he was supported by Francis Wrigley Hirst, the Cobdenite Liberal and anti-statist, who drew up an outline for a possible replacement government composed of more old-fashioned liberals than those currently in office. The Lansdowne letter was rejected. The war went its course and Britain, of course, was on the side of the victors. As far as the old concept of the limited state was concerned, both liberals and conservatives lost. Emboldened by the influence they had enjoyed during the war, social and economic planners were ascendant.

In many ways, the Great War represents the destruction of a civilization, the old order, and its replacement with the modern State with its dilatant reach into every aspect of life. Upon the outbreak of war, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey is said to have remarked, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” As a century of relative peace was coming to an end, the lamps really were going out, and with them, the most liberal age the world had ever known.

ABOUT ALASTAIR PAYNTER

Alastair Paynter is a masters graduate in history, from the University of Southampton. He lives in southern England.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of FEE and Shutterstock.

A Titan Falls: Politicians Befriend Big Business, Undermine Free Market by Doug Bandow

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For most people politics looks like a game about who is up or down. Sometimes established favorites win big. Other times long-shots burst forth and upset the established order. The horse race tends to most capture public attention.

The recent Republican primary defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was one of the bigger shocks to American politics in some time. Two decades ago Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley was ousted in the general election. Fourteen years before that House Majority Whip John Brademas of Indiana went down to defeat. However, congressional leaders usually are handily reelected. Once they are known to for bringing home the bacon for local folks, they become as titans bestriding the world.

But Cantor’s loss will have a much larger impact than simply reshuffling who enjoys the biggest offices on Capitol Hill. He gave lip service to fiscal responsibility but was, argued Nick Gillespie of Reason, “atrocious and hypocritical in all the ways that a Republican can be,” constantly voting to grow government.

Indeed, Cantor’s constituency was as much corporate America as it was Virginia voters. Business was counting on his support to push through reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, long known as “Boeing’s Bank” for the extensive benefits lavished on one company; extension of terrorism risk insurance, which transfers financial liability for loss from firms to taxpayers; and preservation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which nearly wrecked the economy while subsidizing homeowners, builders, and lenders.

Cantor’s loss, said the Washington Post, was “bad news for big business.” The New York Times observed that Cantor was “a powerful ally of business big and small, from giants like Boeing to the many independently owned manufacturers and wholesalers that rely on the federal government for financial support.” He was also “one of Wall Street’s most reliable benefactors in Congress.” His opponent, an economics professor, targeted Cantor’s crony politics.

In practice Cantor’s loss changes little. His replacement as House Majority Leader, California’s Keven McCarthy, appears no less political than Cantor. McCarthy also has relied on Wall Street for fundraising. However, while previously voting to reauthorize the bank, he recently said he would prefer to let the institution’s charter expire. He once owned a sandwich shop, and therefore understands the problems of small business.

Suffering near political death was Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), who trailed a Tea Party-backed state senator in the initial primary vote and narrowly won the runoff, apparently with Democratic support. Widely viewed as the “king of pork,” Cochran relied on his ability to raid the Treasury to pay off fellow Mississippians. Noted the New York Times, the one-time Appropriations Committee chairman and several predecessors all used “their perches on the powerful Appropriations Committees of their chambers to shower their impoverished state with federal funds.”

Cochran also has been a regular supporter of business subsidies. Which is why corporate America returned the favor. Economic elites surprised by Cantor’s loss “are moving quickly to ensure that Mr. Cochran does not meet the same fate,” reported the Times. The incumbent Senate Republican raised $800,000 at just one fund-raiser targeting corporate lobbyists. Big firms like General Atomics and Raytheon have given generously to groups backing Cochran.

It long has been evident that the greatest enemies of capitalism are the capitalists. Even Adam Smith, the famed author of The Wealth of Nations and great proponent of free markets, warned that businessmen oft gathered together to conspire against the public for their own gain. Today it is hard for them to resist doing so. When “everyone” is doing it, who wants to be left out? Especially with boards and shareholders to satisfy.

Of course, business is not alone in shoving its snout into the federal trough. Big Labor and many other influential interests do so as well. However, the disjunction of simultaneously praising and undermining the free market is particularly jarring when coming from businessmen.

Alas, our entire political system has been corrupted. In April Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) gave a thoughtful speech warning of “America’s crisis of crony capitalism, corporate welfare, and political privilege.”  The victims are every day folks, “the poor and middle class” excluded by government “from earning their success on a level playing field.”

No wonder, then, Americans’ ever greater frustration with politics. Blowback is coming as antagonism grows towards those who treat the federal Treasury as a piggy bank for themselves and their supporters. Moreover, as Cantor dramatically discovered, discontent with the politics of privilege may be as strong on the right as on the left. Explained the Times: “Beyond their priorities in Congress, what has unsettled business executives is what they sense as a growing anger over the ‘corporate welfare’ and ‘crony capitalism’ among the many associated with the Tea Party.”

Anger is the appropriate emotion. Who is the better candidate in any particular race is up to the voters in that district or state. But citizens everywhere should be frustrated with a government driven by interest groups where business leaders who actively subvert the market economy.

The problem is not just the money—roughly $100 billion a year for corporate welfare, for instance. Also disturbing is the message government is sending to all Americans. The way to rise and prosper, to expand one’s business and increase one’s income, is to seize control of the State to loot your neighbors. Gaining wealth by working hard is, well, hard work. It is so much better to hire a lobbyist and whisper sweet nothings in legislators’ ears. No heavy lifting there.

Moreover, the illusion of consent cannot hide the dubious moral principles these players rely upon. If government has as purpose, it is to advance particularly important and genuinely collective interests which cannot be achieved privately. Taking people’s earnings for anything less differs little from theft. Sadly, most of today’s vast transfer state looks like a complex of stolen goods.

Eric Cantor’s defeat is a useful reminder to the political class that even they are ultimately accountable to the people. Only by sharing that message widely is there a chance of rolling back the rampant political privilege and cronyism which dominates Washington today.

dougbandow3540ABOUT DOUG BANDOW

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of a number of books on economics and politics. He writes regularly on military non-interventionism.

Obama Encounters an Apex of Anger

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Barack Obama has managed to do something one would hardly imagine a President could achieve by the midpoint of his second term. He has managed to anger most segments of the American populace, including those to the far Left who constitute a significant part of his base. It has taken time for most people to reach this point.

Americans are amazingly patient with their presidents, but Obama has pushed them beyond scandal fatigue. The “final straw” appears to be the illegal alien invasion masterminded by Obama.

What they are seeing and hearing is not what they were sold; a charming man of allegedly extraordinary intelligence. Friday’s press conference regarding the shoot down of the Malaysian commercial aircraft showed us a man utterly lacking any moral outrage and, as always, “leading from behind” by insisting this was Europe’s problem, not one that would be addressed by an America doing anything more than applying a few economic sanctions.

He looked and sounded bored, annoyed that he had to utter a bunch of empty platitudes about Russia; the same Russia with which he and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had declared a “reset” from previous administrations’ relations. Putin took his measure and saw weakness.

Obama’s response to the Middle East was to pull out all our troops from Iraq and a muddled series of actions in Afghanistan topped by the announcement of when troops there would leave, always a very bad idea when the enemy is still in the field. The “Arab Spring” became another Obama nightmare of bad decisions.

Cartoon - Lame Duck

For a larger view click on the image.

It took years, but it eventually became clear to most paying any attention that Obama has told so many lies that whatever he says now is deemed worthless. Then, too, his administration is now subject to congressional investigations that include the Internal Revenue Service and the Veterans Administration.

The Attorney General was slapped with contempt of Congress. A key figure in the IRS scandal, Lois Lerner, has pled the Fifth.

The House of Representatives is getting ready to sue Obama for failing to obey the Constitution’s separation of powers. The President’s efforts to ignore the Constitution have been met with an extraordinary number of Supreme Court rebuffs, many of which were unanimous.

How bad is Obama’s situation at present? One indication is the way the news media has been slowly, but steadily falling out of love with him. As Paul Bedard noted recently in the Washington Examiner, “In unprecedented criticism of the White House 38 journalism groups have assailed the president’s team for censoring media coverage, limiting access to top officials, and overall ‘politically-driven suppression of the news.”

David Cuiller, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, said, “It is up to journalists—and citizens—to push back against this force. Hard!” As a member of the SPJ since the 1970s this is a welcome expression of indignation, but it is also been occurring across a full spectrum of Republicans, Democrats, and independent voters as various Obama policies have negatively affected them.

No President has ever much liked the news media. This one, though, took them from adoration to distrust. With the exception of the network news shows and steadfast liberal newspapers, Obama’s news coverage is going to become increasingly harsh. Or should we say “accurate”?

The illegal alien immigration issue has enraged average Americans and Obama is not helped when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claims that “the borders are secure” or House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi makes some equally absurd and moronic claim.

In the six years since Obama took office in 2009, Americans have encountered a succession of scandals that began with Operation Fast and Furious when a scheme to transfer arms to Mexican cartels was covered up by the assertion of executive privilege. The Obamacare lies were followed by administration efforts to force corporations and religious organizations to forego their faith-based beliefs. Millions of Americans lost their healthcare insurance plans, only to have them replaced for far more expensive ones.

On top of the problems Americans encountered with the implementation of Obamacare, along came revelations that the Department of Veterans Affairs was letting some veterans seeking healthcare die by falsifying treatment records.

While this was occurring the nation’s debt rose to a historic high of $17 trillion, causing its credit rating to be reduced for the first time. There has been no budget during his first and second terms. There are still more than 90 million Americans out of work and the prices of food and gasoline are rising.

Following the Benghazi attack, the scandal was the lies told by Obama and Hillary Clinton, then the Secretary of State, describing it as a random attack despite the fact it occurred on the anniversary of 9/11. When the administration released five high ranking Taliban leaders at the same time we continue to be engaged in a war against them in Afghanistan, the public really began to take notice. It angered veterans and others.

No one in Congress believes a word Obama says and the House of Representatives is getting ready to sue him for his failure to enforce the laws Congress has passed and his usurpation of unconstitutional power to alter laws whenever he wants. This is unprecedented in the history of the nation.

And the scandals noted are only a small number of the actions Obama and his administration have taken that have finally combined to create a body of evidence that he has been acting against the interest and welfare of Americans he took an oath to protect. How does he expect to do that as he reduces the nation’s military strength to pre-WWII levels?

Obama’s response to the growing level of anger has been to concentrate on fund raising for the Democratic Party, but even those benefitting from it do not want to be seen with him.

In August he will take a long vacation in the ultra-rich environs of Martha’s Vineyard while thousands of illegal aliens continue to stream in and his only “solution” is to ask Congress for billions to care for them. And to blame Congress—Republicans—for failing to pass an immigration bill that amounts to an amnesty no one wants.

The anger that has been building is likely to be expressed on November 4 when Americans go to the polls to clean house and, by that, I mean ridding Congress of as many Democrats as possible and replacing them with openly avowed conservatives. That’s just over a hundred days from now.

The cliché is that “the fish stinks from the head” and it is clear now that the Obama administration reflects the corruption and incompetence of Barack Obama, a Chicago politician who leapt to power despite not even having served a full term as a U.S. Senator. He was elected to be the first black President of the United States and it is no small irony that even African-Americans know he has done little or nothing to address their needs and concerns.

He will not be impeached as he should be, but he will increasingly lack any power other than executive orders. The constitutional system will work, but it will take decades to repair the damage.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

298 souls on MH17 have paid the price for Obama’s “flexibility” [VIDEO]

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Back in his first term, while taking part in a global nuclear security summit in South Korea — and believing the microphones were off –President Barack Hussein Obama was caught leaning over to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to say “This is my last election. After my election I will have more flexibility.” Medvedev replied, “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”

Sadly, hundreds of Ukrainians and 298 souls on MH17 have paid the price for the weakness and abject cowardice of Obama’s “flexibility.”

And here in America we quibble over a lawsuit against this charlatan.

The blood on Vladimir Putin’s hands was poured by Barack Obama who is indirectly responsible, accountable and no different than Neville Chamberlain’s weakness in the face of the 20th Century maniacal dictator Adolf Hitler.

So much for no drama Obama. He is purposefully creating drama globally.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com. The featured photo of the wreckage of Malaysian Air flight MH17 is courtesy of the India Financial Times.

Cracks in the Democrats’ Foundation

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In a WorldNetDaily column of July 16, titled, “Why they won’t let us talk to the illegal kids,” talk radio pioneer Barry Farber suggested that, “the reason we in media are not allowed to talk to the children is that the conversation in every honest interview will get around to, ‘What made you all risk so much to get here?’  The answer will be, ‘Oh! Mama and Papa heard it many times. Your President Obama has found many little ways to say, ‘Come on up!  We won’t send you back!’ ”

Barry’s very ominous prediction was that, “The minute that awareness reaches critical mass, Obama, his works, his team, and the Democratic Party will suffer a rejection that will make the Republican years in political purgatory seem like a quick tour-bus jaunt through hell.”

One of my major regrets is that, barring divine intervention, I will not be around to see how historians will chronicle America’s post-constitutional period: the last half of the 20th century and the first 16 years of the 21st century.  These are the years during which one of our major political parties, the Democrat Party, created an ideological plantation on which they cynically attempted to imprison an entire ethnic minority.

Rarely in human history has any civilized nation so offended basic human decency than did the United States during the era of slavery, between 1619 and the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1861. In fact, many Americans found the institution of slavery to be so morally repugnant that a new political party, the Republican Party, was spawned out of the abolitionist movement.

The Republican Party was founded in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin, on March 20, 1854.  Anti-slavery sentiment was so strong in some northern and border states that the party was able to elect its first president, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, just six years later.  In the ensuing 104 years, Republicans fought what seemed an endless battle against Democrats who longed for the return of slavery and who opposed basic human rights for former slaves and their descendants.

  • A Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
  • It was Republicans who drafted and passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, outlawing slavery and giving blacks citizenship and the right to vote.
  • It was Democrat-controlled legislatures across the South who enacted the Black Codes and the Jim Crow laws.
  • In 1866, it was Democrats who created the Ku Klux Klan as a paramilitary arm of their party.  Its purpose was to intimidate, terrorize, and murder black people.  In the years between 1882 and 1951, some 3,437 blacks and 1,293 whites, nearly all Republicans, were lynched by the KKK.
  • It was Republicans who authored the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Reconstruction Act of 1867, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.
  • It was Democrats who wrote and passed the Repeal Act of 1894, repealing much of the civil rights legislation passed by Republicans in the years since the close of the Civil War.  In other instances, a Democrat-dominated U.S. Supreme Court declared elements of the Republican civil rights legislation to be unconstitutional.
  • It was a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who authored the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1960.  Later, it was the strong support of Republicans that made the Civil Rights Act of 1964 possible… a law that was almost identical, word-for-word, to the Republicans’ Civil Rights Act of 1875, overturned by a Democrat-dominated U.S. Supreme Court.  And finally, it was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who signed the Equal Employment Act of 1972.

It was not until the Brown vs. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the mid-1950s that Democrats finally decided that, if they could no longer control blacks through violence and intimidation, they would have to buy their hearts, their minds, and their votes with an endless variety of social welfare programs.  Since that time, and to their great discredit, blacks have turned their backs on the Republicans who worked so tirelessly and so valiantly on their behalf.  Instead, they now cast more than 90% of their votes for white Democrats, those who were their oppressors for more than three centuries.  Never in the history of man has a race of people shown such ingratitude toward those who were their principal benefactors.

But now it appears that a schism is beginning to develop in the black man’s love affair with the Democrat Party. For the past sixty years, Democrats have been laying sloppy, slobbering kisses all over our black population. But what blacks are now learning is that, what they took to be undying love and devotion, was nothing more than a prelude to a cheap one-night stand.

Bernadette Lancelin, a black mother in Houston, apparently a former Obama supporter, recently found herself being interviewed by a Houston TV station. She said she was furious that Barack Obama wants to spend nearly $4 billion on Central American kids who’ve entered the country illegally.  She said, “What about the kids here?  What about the kids here in our neighborhood?  And not just in our neighborhood, but in our country? All these (illegal immigrant) kids, really?  Why can’t they go back?” She said, “I’m sorry that their parents are in poor living conditions or surroundings or whatever’s going on out there. I don’t care. I care about what’s going on right here in my own back yard, my neighborhood.”

Mychal Massie, a black writer and talk show host in Los Angeles, has said, “I condemn in the strongest possible terms the media for refusing to investigate (the Obamas) as they did President Bush and President Clinton, and for refusing to label them for what they truly are.  There is no scenario known to man, whereby a white president and his wife could ignore laws, flaunt their position, and lord over the people, as these two are permitted out of fear for their color… Never in my life, inside or outside of politics, have I witnessed such dishonesty in a political leader.”

She went on to say, “He is the most mendacious political figure I have ever witnessed.  Even by the low standard of his presidential predecessors, his narcissistic, contumacious arrogance is unequaled.  Using Obama as the bar, Nero would have to be elevated to sainthood.”

In a July 14 editorial for Minuteman News, titled “Democrats’ New Trophy Wife,” attorney A.J. Delgado writes, “Democrats have built a brand as the party willing to stand up for black Americans, but the amnesty push (for illegal Hispanic immigrants) shows what a false promise that was.  The message to black voters is: ‘Yes, your ancestors endured unimaginable hardships and helped build this country, and we said we’d help you out.  But now we have a new trophy wife.’  Meanwhile, the harm to African Americans is not limited to reduced wages, greater competition for jobs, and declining household incomes… now even the black history of suffering is being diluted.  Liberal columnist and CNN pundit Sally Kohn penned a column last week arguing that the term ‘illegal immigrant’ is the same as the N-word.”

If there is a silver lining in the current immigration crisis along our southern border, it is that a great many previously disinterested or complacent Americans are being awakened to the evils of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party.  William Gheen, president of the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC predicts that, on the weekend of July 19-20, more than 300 protest rallies will take place in cities all across the country.  He said, “Our goal is to unify Americans of all races, political parties, and walks of life against the Obama-inspired illegal immigrant invasion.”

What is finally beginning to dawn on African Americans is that Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and other Democrats have long taken them for granted… assuming that, once a black man is bought, he will stay bought.  It is apparent that what Democrats are hoping is that Hispanics will become the most sought-after minority voting bloc.  Add those votes to the black vote, the labor vote, and the public employee vote, along with the votes of trial lawyers, radical feminists, radical environmentalists, gays, lesbians, and transvestites, and they expect to have a winning coalition that will maintain them in power until the end of time.

Delgado likens the Democrats’ current attitude toward blacks to the husband who leaves his wife after 30 years of marriage, saying, “We’ve had a good run, honey, but I’ve found someone new.”  He says, “Yes, black America… it’s closing time and there’s a younger, hotter version of you out there on the dance floor, and the Democrats are laying on the charm, slick one-liners, and cash to buy her affections… and votes.”

But now, in a stroke of irony that not even Hollywood screen writers could have visualized, we find that it is a black president and a black attorney general who are most responsible for the fissures that are beginning to appear in the once-solid Democrat base. Yes, cracks are beginning to appear in the Democrats’ foundation. For the good of mankind, let’s all hope that Barry Farber’s prediction comes true and that Obama and his criminal conspirators will be soon be accorded the ignominy they so richly deserve.

Larry Grathwohl: Remembering an American Hero a Year Later

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Larry Grathwohl was one of a disappearing breed, from the working class, an American patriot, who had a clear moral vision. He fought communists in the jungles of Vietnam and then in their clandestine cells here in America. He was a gentleman, respectful of women, a loving father and grandfather.

A year after his untimely death, I still feel his absence. I hear his corny jokes. When I hear a funny phrase, I can hear him repeating it obsessively. In May 2013, he and Tina Trent and I were speaking to tea party groups in Florida about the republication of Larry’s book about infiltrating the Weather Underground, Bringing Down America. Larry’s sense of humor helped bring lightness to our grim and ugly subject, Bill Ayers and the group he cofounded, Weatherman, which became the Weather Underground.

After a summer break, we were to resume our tour. Then we got the devastating news that Larry had been found dead in his apartment on July 18, 2013.

I had met Larry at one of Cliff Kincaid’s conferences several years ago. Cliff is a fearless advocate for the forgotten victims of communist terrorist groups like the Weatherman. I was discussing my report about how Bill Ayers, terrorist-turned-education-professor, indoctrinated students toward his Marxist revolutionary plan. Larry talked about his experiences as an infiltrator, about Weather Underground’s murderous plans and actions. One of these actions—the bombing of a Detroit police station–he sabotaged.

Larry described such tasks and those he faced while serving in Vietnam matter-of-factly, never with bravado. He used the survival strategies he had learned in Vietnam and applied them to the very dangerous work of living in the cells of these revolutionaries.

During breaks between tea party events last year, Larry was reading Cathy Wilkerson’s “Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman.” Every few pages he’d have to stop because of his astonishment at her lack of remorse. We would compare her account with Bill Ayers’s versions. After serving time in prison, Wilkerson, like most of the other terrorists, went into teaching.

In recalling his days with the Weathermen, Larry repeatedly wondered aloud how such a group of privileged and college-educated young adults could casually discuss their plans for putting Americans into reeducation camps after the Revolution—and eliminate those who refused to be reeducated. Larry recounted Ayers’s lack of concern after Larry had warned him about the number of innocent people who would be killed if Ayers’s bomb intended for a Detroit police station went off. Ayers and these same academics now talk about “white privilege.” But these sons and daughters of real privilege cared not a whit about the victims, black and white, of their bombs, whether those in a Detroit restaurant or the black and white policemen and guards murdered in the 1981 Brinks Armored Car robbery.

Not even a full year after Larry’s death, the blowhard, Bill Ayers, was the celebrity/revolutionary-academic guest on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show. I was sickened by hearing her call him “Professor” and hearing him glibly lie about his past in his put-on soft voice. At an earlier time in America, Bill Ayers’s nonsensical and polemical “scholarship” would have gotten him a firm “no thank you” by a university hiring committee. Instead, he quickly became “Distinguished Professor of Education” at the University of Illinois at Chicago. At another time, his preening and obfuscating would have gotten him hard-hitting questions from the press. Now he is given celebrity status on the only “conservative” cable news program.

Ayers’s “pal” Barack Obama is in the White House and “bringing down America”–not with actual bombs but with a radical transformation: nationalizing healthcare and education, undermining the military and police, using agencies like the IRS to persecute law-abiding citizens, increasing dependence on government programs, flooding the borders with third-world future voters, and choking the middle class.

Be prepared for pardons for the few remaining terrorists in prison, including David Gilbert, serving a 75-year sentence for three counts of felony murder in the Brinks case.

Larry is no longer around to rebut Ayers’s lies. Ayers lied about Larry on Fox News, without a challenge from Megyn Kelly. Larry’s book and testimony are there to read.

Fox could not invite Larry onto the program. But he has many friends and colleagues who knew him and loved him and know the real story. We are celebrating the life of Larry Grathwohl, true American hero, at the website for his book and story.

The event is being coordinated by Larry’s daughter, Lindsay, and Tina Trent, publisher.

They write, “We are asking that bloggers, radio folks, podcasters, and others in the media use July 18th to tell the truth about violent leftist radicals like Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.” They invite everyone to participate. Contact them at bringingdownamerica@gmail.com.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on TownHall.com.

Obamacare Must Be Repealed

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While the issue of immigration is uppermost in people’s minds right now, it is likely at this point halfway through his second term that President Obama will be identified by historians most closely with his signature, namesake legislation, the Affordable Patient Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

They will do so for two reasons; that he lied to everyone about it and it has been a failure in countless ways from the moment its website was introduced.

Obamacare_Paying_For_It_Poster (1)

For a larger view click on the image. Graphic courtesy of The Peoples Cube.

In April PolitiFact, a project of the Tampa Bay Times, announced the “most significant falsehood of the year” and it came as no surprise it was “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” An April Fox News poll revealed that 61% of respondents said the Obama lies at least some of the time on important issues. Only 15% thought he was completely truthful.

By July 2 a Quinnipiac University poll announced that its survey had determined that 33% of the respondents believed Obama was the “Worst President Since WWII.” The poll also revealed that between 54% and 44% believed the Obama administration was not competent to run the government.

If you want proof of that, you need only follow the horror story of Obamacare.

In September 2013, prior to Obamacare’s implementation the following month, Daniel Henninger, a Wall Street Journal columnist, wisely noted that “Obamacare is the biggest bet that American liberalism has made in 80 years on its fundamental beliefs. This thing called ‘Obamacare’ carries on its back all the justifications, hopes and dreams of the entitlement state.”

“If Obamacare fails, or seriously falters, the entitlement state will suffer a historic loss of credibility with the American people” adding that “only the American people can kill Obamacare.”

The great Prohibition experiment was killed by the American people and it took a Constitutional amendment to do it. It was a monumental failure.

I would be remiss if I did not point out that no Republican voted for Obamacare. It was entirely a Democratic Party creation, one it has wanted going back to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid.

What Americans have learned in the short time since Obamacare has been implemented is that virtually everything they were told about it was and is a lie.

People who were insured lost their health plan—six million had been cancelled by May, nor could they keep their doctor because many health care plans sold on federal and state exchanges have a limited number of in-network physicians from whom to choose. The costs of Obamacare plans costs are frequently in excess of those from the previous free market and include elements that do not fit the age or sex of those who sign up, such as maternity coverage for women beyond childbearing age.

Obamacare exists because the Supreme Court deemed it to be a “tax”, but it is demonstrably unconstitutional insofar as it represents the mandate of the federal government that everyone buy something that they may not want and, more importantly, cannot afford. When the government can tell you what you must buy, you are no longer living in a free society.

Sharyl Attkisson, writing in Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, reported one source as saying, “In general healthy people are paying more and unhealthy people are paying less.” There isn’t even a “smidgen” of fairness in this.

At no point before or since its inception has the Obama administration told the truth about any aspect of Obamacare, particularly how many legitimate enrollments there have been thus far. In April the number cited was eight million. Attkisson reported that observers immediately pointed out that “the figure is overstated because it counted people who weren’t actually covered because they hadn’t paid their premiums. That actual enrollment was likely closer to between 6.4 and 6.8 million, both below the eight million figure and the stated target of seven million.”

Arnold Ahlert, writing for CanadaFreePress.com, noted in early July that “A pair of reports released by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General reveal ‘internal’ controls for evaluating healthcare applications are ineffective, and 85% of 2.9 million data ‘inconsistencies’ on Obamacare applications cannot be resolved, even after nine months of attempting to do so.” Not only did many of the 39 state exchanges fail to work, but the enrollments are plagued with evidence of both data errors and fraud.

Obamacare - Lipstick on a PigObamacare is so flawed that the President has had to unilaterally and unconstitutionally step in to alter the terms of the law thus far. That is an impeachable offense.

Obamacare is a massive travesty and, hidden below the headlines is the fact that the failures inherent in its implementation are causing some to die because of bureaucratic delays encountered while waiting to receive the care their plans are supposed to provide, if they were even able to secure a plan.

The election in November of enough Republicans to control the Senate and an increase in the House would permit them to act upon the numerous bills the House has passed to end Obamacare and which are blocked in the Senate by Harry Reid, its Majority Leader. Ending Obamacare would truly be a blessing for all Americans.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

GM is alive.Drivers are dead. Any questions?

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Remember the arrogant 2012 bumper sticker based on Joe Biden’s boast at the DNC? “GM is alive. Bin Laden is dead. Any questions?”

GM_Alive_Dead_Sticker.jpg

Actually, I do have a question. Was Bin Laden driving GM’s Chevy Cobalt when he died?

It now appears that many American civilians with absolutely no connection to al-Qaeda have also become dead or injured while driving one of those small, fuel-efficient Chevrolet Cobalt, Pontiac G5, or Saturn Ion.

The Washington Post reports:

“An investigation into General Motors’ failure to recall millions of small cars containing a deadly ignition switch defect found a corporate culture in which employees failed to take responsibility for the problem, which has been linked to at least 13 deaths, said GM chief executive Mary T. Barra.”

This raises even more questions.

Notice the part about “a corporate culture in which employees failed to take responsibility for the problem.” Was it because the employees knew that they were too big to fail?

How many of them were members of the United Auto Workers? Obama had rewarded this labor union’s political shenanigans and donations to his campaign with 39 percent of General Motors. That alone should have taught the GM employees a lesson that real money comes, not from actual labor but from shady political dealings, and that honest work is for suckers.

General Motors waited more than a decade to recall their 2.6 million defective small cars worldwide. Obviously, the problem started long before the Obama administration decided to bail them out, thus rewarding bad behavior and costing Treasury a loss of roughly $10 billion.

That was yet another real-life lesson from which the GM employees could learn that withholding information is better than honest work, and that those who actually do honest work wind up paying for those who don’t. Now GM is going to establish a compensation program for the victims and their families. How much of that cost will be covered by a taxpayer-funded bailout?

And now for the final question. Using GM chief executive’s own language, who built that “corporate culture in which employees failed to take responsibility for the problem”?

According to her boss, the nation’s chief executive, no one in particular. In president Obama’s mind, businesses just happen to grow and develop their own cultures, like fungus. No one takes credit for a fungus culture; why should anyone take credit for a business culture? Whether you succeed or fail, the administration’s credo is, “You didn’t build that!”

GM officially confirms up to 13 deaths; trial lawyers are likely to raise the number to 60. Is that a fair cost of keeping GM alive? If so, how many lives and billions of taxpayer dollars will it take before the cost of this administration’s meddling with the economy becomes prohibitive? At what point will it stop being fair and become criminal?

Ayn Rand’s prophetic novel Atlas Shrugs has a chapter in which hundreds of people on a crowded train lose their lives because railroad employees have stopped taking responsibility for their actions. Their failure to take responsibility was a consequence of the nation’s new culture of “fairness” and “equality” that was being promoted by an intrusive “progressive” government. In a twist of dark irony, all the participants in the story were fully supportive of that “fair” culture – from the corrupt government officials to the cowardly railroad executives to the clueless passengers who never figured out what had doomed them to die in a smoke-filled tunnel.

It seems that today the Obama administration, the “progressive” politicians, the unions, and all their low-information supporters, many of whom are driving GM’s small, fuel-efficient cars, are writing an updated, real-life version of Atlas Shrugged, in which the story of General Motors is the latest contribution to this man-made dystopia.

RELATED ARTICLE: Documents Show General Motors Kept Silent on Fatal Crashes – NYTimes.com

Nothing Essential About Essence

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I wrote a column three years ago titled, “Black Women No Longer Have Their Essence.” My point was that Essence, the pre-eminent magazine for Black women, had become irrelevant and an embarrassment to the Black community.

Unfortunately, Essence has continued its decent into irrelevancy.

For 20 years, Essence has sponsored an annual party during the July 4th holiday known as the Essence Music Festival (EMF). According to their website, the EMF, “known as the party with a purpose, is an annual music festival which started in 1995 as a one-time event to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Essence, a magazine aimed primarily towards African-American women. It is the largest event celebrating African-American culture and music in the United States.”

According to media accounts, “…In 2008, for the first time since its 1995 inception, the festival was not produced by the original producer team. Instead, Essence Communications, owner of the festival and the Essence magazine, contracted Rehage Entertainment Inc. A new main stage facelift was designed by production designer Stefan Beese.” Essence Communications and Essence Magazine are no longer Black-owned, they are owned by Time Inc.

Maybe this would explain why EMF contracted with Rehage Entertainment Inc. and Stefan Beese to produce the event and to build a new stage. They couldn’t find a Black firm capable of taking on these contracts? If they need some referrals, I would be glad to send them a list of Black people who could do the job, if they are truly interested in the “empowerment” of the Black community as they claim.

There was also no diversity in the programming. Of their 86 “empowerment” speakers during their various daytime panels, all were media personalities, journalist, or liberal politicians. There were maybe three people who one could argue were businessmen, but that’s a stretch. As far as I can tell, there were no Republicans invited to participate, as though Essence has no Black female Republican readers?

One panel was about the hair texture of Jay Z and Beyoncé’s baby. Yes, you heard me right; Essence had a whole panel to discuss a child’s nappy hair. One news account said, “Essence Magazine recently hosted an Empowerment Beauty of Confidence panel to comment on the backlash [over the child’s hair]. Essence asked Cynthia Bailey, Kim Kimble, Chenoa Maxwell, Tomiko Frasier Hines, Soledad O’Brien and Wendy Raquel Robinson to comment on the backlash.”

There were no empowerment panels on the women who work in the White House for Obama being paid less than their male counterparts; there were no empowerment panels on why Obama never interviewed a Black female lawyer for the two Supreme Court nominations he made to the Court; there were no empowerment panels on the number of Black kids languishing in the foster care system while Obama wants to throw billions of dollars to support children coming to this country illegally.

In essence, Essence’s continued march towards irrelevancy has nothing to do with them being White-owned. They were well down that road before they were sold. One could make the argument that the articles in Essence have become less substantive after Time Inc. assumed leadership, not that substance was ever their hallmark. How can you talk about “empowerment” without talking about Lynn Hutchings, a State Representative in the Wyoming legislature? She is the first Black female Republican to serve in the state’s history.

How can you talk about “empowerment” without talking about J’Tia Taylor, who has a Ph.D in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois; she started college at the age of 15. How can you talk about “empowerment” without talking about Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins, the State Department’s Coordinator for Threat Reduction Programs? Ambassador Jenkins has a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Virginia, an LL.M. in international and comparative law from the Georgetown University Law Center, an M.P.A. from the State University of New York at Albany, a J.D. from Albany Law School; and a B.A. from Amherst College. She also attended The Hague Academy for International Law.

You have such accomplished women – Democrats and Republicans – yet Essence is talking about the texture of a child’s hair.

RELATED ARTICLE: Blacks Should Be Thankful There Was An America To Come To

Anti-Israel Protesters Attack Paris Synagogues: Congregants trapped in building as Bastille Day demonstration turns violent

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Traditionally French people dance in the streets and fire stations on the eve of the Quatorze Juillet, known in English as Bastille Day. This year, however, anti-Israel demonstrators took control of the monument in the center of the Bastille circle Sunday, brandishing Palestinian flags and cardboard replicas of scimitars and Kassam rockets. Described in AFP releases as a well-mannered demonstration except for a few incidents, it was in fact a hate-fest against Israel and the Jews. “Death to the Jews,” “Murderous Israel,” “One Jew Some Jews All Jews are Terrorists” figured loudly among the slogans hurled by kefiyyeh-clad marchers.

According to the police, the 7,000 demonstrators (organizers claimed 30,000) began in the northern quartier of Barbès, which has a large African and Maghrebi population, and marched to the Bastille, where they remained for several hours. A small contingent started to attack the police, and was quickly brought under control. At the same time, hundreds of protesters raced up rue de la Roquette—street of the rocket—and surrounded the Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue, which is protected by a tall metal gate. Security guards from the SPCJ (Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive), Beitar, and the Jewish Defense League faced assailants reportedly armed with knives, axes, and iron bars.

Five riot policemen stationed in front of the synagogue, where some 200 congregants happened to be attending a prayer service for Israel’s safety, were unable to handle the crowd. It took a half hour for reinforcements to arrive, and another two hours during which law enforcement combed the surrounding streets before members of the congregation were told it was safe to leave. The chief rabbi of Paris, Michel Guggenheim, was at the synagogue during the incident.

Another synagogue, on the rue des Tournelles near the Place des Vosges, was also targeted, though details of that incident have not yet emerged. Two weeks ago I attended a joyful ceremony there for the more than 1,500 French Jews making aliyah this summer, in the presence of Natan and Avital Sharansky, as well as the Israeli ambassador to France andnewly elected chief rabbi of France Haim Korsia.

Jewish radio stations were abuzz Sunday evening and Monday with testimony from people who had been inside the synagogue and statements from Jewish community leaders. Mainstream media coverage, however, focused largely on the 14 Juillet military parade, with the day’s “death to the Jews” chants neatly overlooked.

Roger Cukierman, the president of CRIF, the umbrella organization of French Jews, and Joël Mergui, president of the Consistoire, met with Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve yesterday, and asked for an outright ban on anti-Israel demonstrations due to their blatant disregard for law and order.

Local Jewish community leaders have excellent relations with President Francois Hollande’s government, as they did with the previous Sarkozy administration. During the incident at the Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue, Jewish leaders were in contact with the Interior Minister, Prime Minister Manuel Valls, and the chief of police. No one questions the government’s sincere sympathy for the Jewish community, or its fervent wish to bring a halt to the incidents, which are alienating French Jews and giving France a bad reputation internationally. The problem is that French authorities are overwhelmed, outrun, cornered, and caught in their own contradictions.

Violent demonstrations under various pretexts have taken place in France since the early 2000s. In 2003, participants in a peace march beat up two young men from Hashomer Hatzair, then tried to break into a building in the Marais where more than 100 young Jews were gathered. There were massive, violent anti-Israel rallies during the 2009 conflict between Israel and Hamas. Sunday’s incident, however, signifies a heightened threat against French Jews. Anti-Israel protestors are more heavily armed and more defiant than before.

French Jews, however, are not cringing. They are standing firm and demanding appropriate government measures. Still, there is a sinking feeling that one day soon the doors will not resist, the mob will enter, the intolerable will occur.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on Tablet Magazine. The feature photo of the Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.