RUTHFULLY YOURS

Could it be that two generations from now our grandchildren are going to be watching a documentary about the consequences of America’s retreat in the Middle East?

That’s the question I am pondering this week on the 40th anniversary of the communist conquest of Indochina.

The event is being marked by the broadcast on PBS of Rory Kennedy’s documentary “Last Days in Vietnam.” It is a stunning scoop that recounts the desperate scramble — by our GIs, spies and diplomats — to save our Vietnamese friends as a communist army descended on our ally.

Kennedy has come up with film clippings and interviews that are unbelievably harrowing.

They show Vietnamese clambering to get into the American embassy compound in Saigon and onto helicopters, to be ferried out to American warships standing off shore.

Napoleon Bonaparte purportedly said “Let China sleep, for when China wakes, she will shake the world.”

As Thomas J. Christensen, the author of his recently published “The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power”, reminds us, “For millennia China was arguably the greatest civilization on the planet and for many previous centuries its most powerful empire.”

China is no longer an empire, but it remains a huge nation geographically and huge in terms of its population.

President Obama delivered the keynote address at the United States Coast Guard Academy commencement Wednesday in New London, Connecticut. In his commencement speech, Obama warned graduates climate change is one of the largest threats they will have to face as they defend the United States and our nation’s interests abroad.

Unlike the other service academies, admission to the academy does not require a congressional nomination. Students are officers-in-training and many go to flight school. Tuition for cadets is fully funded by the Coast Guard in exchange for an obligation of five years active duty service upon graduation. The motto of the academy is: “Who lives here reveres honor, honors duty”

In his speech, Obama said denying climate change or refusing to deal with it is negligence and “dereliction of duty.”

PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Climate change is one of those most severe threats. This is not just a problem for countries on the coasts or for certain regions of the world. Climate change will impact every country on the planet. No nation is immune. So I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security. And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. So we need to act and we need to act now.

After all, isn’t that the true hallmark of leadership? When you’re on deck, standing your watch, you stay vigilant, you plan for every contingency. If you see storm clouds gathering or dangerous shoals ahead you don’t just sit back and do nothing. You take action to protect your ship, to keep your crew safe. Anything less is negligence. It is a dereliction of duty. So to with climate change. Denying it or refusing to deal with it endangers our national security. It undermines the readiness of our forces.”

Think about the major policy undertakings of the Obama administration over the past six and a half years. It began with a “stimulus” that wasted trillions in the quest of generating jobs, but did little to nothing in achieving that goal. That was followed by ObamaCare which most agree has been a disaster for the nation’s healthcare sector and, finally, Common Core, a one-size-fits-all testing program intended, we were told, to improve learning standards in the nation’s schools. The only thing it has achieved is the opposition of parents, teachers unions, and entire states.

In the April edition of The Heartland Institute’s School Reform News, one could find headlines that included “Arizona House Votes to Repeal and Replace Common Core”, “Arizona House Votes to Repeal Common Core”, ”West Virginia House Passes Common Core Repeal Bill”, and “Ohio Bill Would Protect Students Opting Out of Common Core Tests.” In March, some 19 states had introduced legislation to either halt or replace Common Core. Do you see a trend here?

The off-duty, undercover cop who watched while members of a bike gang hauled the driver out of an SUV on New York’s West Side Highway last year and beat him was asked why he did nothing. His response: “If I knew what was going to happen, I would not have gotten out of bed”.

The question currently being asked of candidates – knowing what we know now, would you have invaded Iraq in 2003? – does little to reveal the judgment, temperament or character of the one being asked. It serves no purpose, other than to fill the questioner with supercilious indignation, and to make the interrogatee, no matter the response, look foolish.

The current uproar began when Megyn Kelly of Fox News asked Jeb Bush, “knowing what we now know,” would he have authorized the invasion of Iraq? Governor Bush answered what he thought was the question, but ignored the hypothetical introductory phrase. From a political perspective, it was a mistake on Mr. Bush’s part, but it was the question that was absurd. How does one answer such a hypothetical question? Ms. Kelly was surely trying to trap Jeb Bush and, unfortunately for him, she succeeded. But did her audience learn anything of importance? Was it newsworthy, or did she and the question become the news? On Sunday evening, Chris Wallace asked the same question of Senator Marco Rubio. When Mr. Rubio pushed back, Mr. Wallace became exasperated; so the Senator gave the answer Mr. Wallace wanted. The audience learned nothing, other than that Chris Wallace, whom I generally admire, can be an ass.

Cyrus McGoldrick wasn’t at his home in Florida this past week. He spent the week in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Part of his time was devoted to sightseeing, and part of it was spent cursing his home country, the United States, while shilling for Iran on Iranian TV. He is currently back on U.S. soil, but his actions suggest that he instead renounce his citizenship and take up permanent residency in the terrorist state, where his mom was born. But before he leaves, he needs to be investigated.

Cyrus McGoldrick converted to Islam, while attending Columbia University at the age of 20. It did not take him long to become radicalized, as following his graduation in 2010, he became the Civil Rights Manager for the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Prior to that, he had served as an intern for CAIR-NY. He has also served as CAIR-NY’s Advocacy Director.

The Very Reverend Gary Hall declared “one of the great blessings” in his life as being able to “encounter Islam” while introducing in Washington, DC, an April 21 National Cathedral presentation on “Islam and Politics in the U.S.” The National Cathedral dean’s words once again set in this “spiritual home for the nation” a politically correct tone for a subsequent discussion naively presenting Islam as morally equivalent to Judeo-Christian beliefs.

An Islamic prayer service in the National Cathedral indicates that total lack of obedience to Jesus Christ in this alleged church which is now more more than a general for rent auditorium.

Like the previously analyzed first session of the National Cathedral’s “Exploring Islam in America” series, Hall emphasized ecumenism before about 60 mostly middle- and senior-aged individuals in the Perry Auditorium. His opening prayer invoked the “God of the Prophet Muhammad” along with the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” and the “God of Jesus.” He then cited religion scholar Huston Smith for the proposition that a Martian “would see one religion with three branches” in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. “Deep continuity” and “respect” marked in his view the relationships between these three faiths claiming ancestry from Abraham.

“There Is No More Molly.” Or Luz.

Five years ago, a cartoonist with The Seattle Weekly, shocked by the way Comedy Central had censored “South Park” after the usual threats from violent Muslims, proclaimed May 20th as “Everybody Draw Mohammed” Day. What was novel about this particular promotion was that the cartoonist, Molly Norris, was not a “right-wing” “Islamophobe” but a liberal progressive, and therefore a rare if not all but unique example of a feminist leftie recognizing that the Islamic enforcers were a threat to her way of life. This was a very welcome development.

Unfortunately, Miss Norris was not so much recognizing reality as blissfully unaware of it. When the backlash against her idea began, she disassociated herself from it and signed off with – Lord help us – a peace symbol. We had some correspondence on the matter, and I write about her in The [Un]documented Mark Steyn (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available and help to prop up my own free-speech campaign against the climate mullahs) in a chapter entitled “There Is No More Molly”:

Now The Seattle Weekly informs us:

‘You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week. That’s because there is no more Molly.’

Longtime Clinton attack dog Sidney Blumenthal is under fire over allegations that he used his connection to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to promote an unusual business scheme involving Libya and possibly the embattled Clinton Foundation.

Blumenthal, Bill Clinton’s legendary hatchet man who earned the richly deserved sobriquet “Sid Vicious” for his scorched-earth assaults on Clinton’s enemies, is now at the center of yet another percolating Clinton scandal that promises to be, like all Clinton scandals, extraordinarily messy and drawn out.

All the details of Blumenthal’s would-be transactions aren’t yet known, but at first glance his half-assed plotting bears more than a passing resemblance to the cockamamie business deal [2] that the late Billy Carter, President Jimmy Carter’s always embarrassing brother, tried to broker in Libya decades ago.

“Orwell changed the intellectual climate by demonstrating that a free spirit would oppose fascism without becoming a Communist. Is it any different in today’s intellectual climate? The media are full of lies about what’s going on in the Middle East. Censorship, more usually self-censorship, is common. A free spirit who opposes Islamism and the vile things done in its name does not become a racist, or an “Islamophobe” in that meaningless phrase. Repair that trench, then!”

Left and Right in Spain do not forget or forgive the Civil War. A so-called Law of Historical Memory banned statues and tributes to General Franco, and set up funds for identifying the victims buried in mass graves. Franco’s mausoleum in the Valley of the Fallen is pure kitsch and its loss might not be regretted. The trenches where George Orwell fought are another matter — they are in disrepair and the Right would not regret their disappearance. Huesca is the site where Orwell survived a bullet through the neck, something he prophesied “will happen to us all in the near future.” Orwell’s son, Richard, 71, now a retired businessman, is trying to enlist the Left in a campaign of restoration and preservation.