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April 2016

Europe Contemplates Life After America Officials wake up to the fact that the U.S. under Obama is no longer a reliable guardian against chaos.By John Vinocur

Disillusionment with Barack Obama coupled with concern that his legacy could help put Donald Trump in the White House has now entered respectable European political discourse. The notion reflects profound doubts at Europe’s core about a country with both a president who broke his word and failed to attack Syria for its use of poison gas—damaging American credibility as the West’s ultimate recourse to justice by military intervention—and a leading candidate for the White House whose campaign resounds with brutality, bigotry and ignorance of the world.

Norbert Roettgen, chairman of the German Bundestag’s foreign-affairs commission, pointed to a possible Obama-begets-Trump link last week. Mr. Roettgen, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party, said the situation meant U.S. allies in Europe and elsewhere were right to express their serious concern about America.

“Paradoxically, Trump is completely inward-looking,” Mr. Roettgen told me. “But he touches on a question of American pride. It’s there that many voters, in terms of the U.S. role in the world, feel that the country has lost considerable ground under Obama. What they see is Obama’s weakness. For example, his allowing the Russians to militarily establish the upper hand in Syria.”

Although polls late last year showed strong French support for sending ground troops within an international coalition to fight Islamic State, and Mrs. Merkel has said “military efforts” are needed as the first step in defeating the Islamist terrorists, Mr. Obama hasn’t dealt convincingly and head-on with the challenge.

“The damage is done,” said a senior European security official during an hour’s conversation after the murderous March 22 terrorist attacks in Brussels. Over these past years, he made clear to me, America’s credibility as a reliable guardian against chaos has been broken.

“The United States’ relative power has decreased in relation to Russia and China,” the official said. “You can only play the American [guardian’s] role when you have communality at home. But I’m not sure the United States is ready to restore this or is able to. Vladimir Putin is present at the places where America and Europe are weak.” CONTINUE AT SITE

The Fruits of Multiculturalism, Abroad and at Home By Jeffrey T. Brown

Once upon a time there were people who naively fantasized about how all the incompatible cultures of the world were going to magically blend, weaving a beautiful tapestry of colors and variations. They called this “Multiculturalism”. Increasingly, the tapestry is made up of glass shards and human remains. At what point do we begin to tally the lives ruined or taken by members of all the “guest” cultures from members of all the host cultures? Pretty soon, I hope, since that seems to be a recurring element of multiculturalism. Wherever you see one, you see the other.

Cultures are either consciously abandoned, or consciously enforced. The theory of multiculturalism has always been a tonic for simpletons, since it celebrates the perpetuation and imposition of an incompatible culture, still being practiced by those who carry it, upon a host culture with which it is mutually exclusive. Multiculturalism is entirely subversive. It is intended to force one or more cultures upon the hosts who do not want or need them. Since both cultures cannot successfully coexist within the host, which has its own successful working culture, the purpose of the exercise has always been fraudulent. The “melting pot” concept worked not because of the concept of multiculturalism, but as testament against it. Those who came here in our parents’ and grandparents’ generation consciously chose to abandon the cultures they left in favor of the American culture. They became Americans, embracing one culture.

If one was being less generous than to call multiculturalism a tonic for simpletons, it would be more accurate to say that modern leftist multiculturalism is actually a weapon. Its purpose is not to enhance the host, but to consume it. If the host’s culture is peaceful, it has no use for malcontents who insist upon the dominance of their native culture. Malcontents, in the form of angry and entitled guests, foment chaos and disorder. And yet, the leftists insist that we demonstrate our cultural superiority by abandoning the superiority of our own culture and importing incompatible languages, traditions, practices, and morals.

Sydney Williams “Political Correctness – The End of Freedom”

Islamic terrorism threatens our lives in ways both visual and dramatic. Primordial screams, the stench of death, and blood-streaked streets where bodies so mutilated they are virtually unrecognizable capture our senses of hearing and sight. It is horrific, real and frightening. It is meant to scare. It does.

The danger from political correctness is different, but no less treacherous. It arrives like the morning fog that, as Carl Sandberg wrote, “comes on little cat feet.” It settles imperceptibly and enshrouds us. Political correctness makes one feel noble and caring, because it is said to be inclusive and sensitive to the feelings of others, especially those who are racially and culturally different. But it is exclusive; it impugns those whose thinking is at odds with convention. It is based on “group think.” It is dependent on minds closed to ideas outside what is deemed correct. It was the basis of fascism and underlies communism. Its consequence can be deadly to those who value freedom and democracy.

We see it on college campuses when students and faculty prevent conservatives from speaking, and in the willingness of administrations to provide “safe places” for those who feel threatened by opinions and expressions that do not match what they have been taught to believe. Political correctness ill prepares students for a world that does not march to a single drummer and puts them at a disadvantage when they enter the workforce where diversity of ideas is as commonplace as cultural diversity. Diversity is a powerful force for good, but only when it extends beyond genetic traits and delves into the realm of ideas. Its adherents claim idealism, but that is not true, as it denigrates those who think differently. It is, in fact, anti-intellectual and anti-liberal. It suffocates curiosity, accountability and individualism, characteristics critical to a liberal education and necessary for life after college.

THE NARCISSISM SUMMIT:JED BABBIN

Iran and North Korea exposed its hollowness weeks before our president convened it.

Hours before President Obama convened a fifty-nation summit on nuclear weapons last Thursday, he celebrated himself in a Washington Post op-ed. He began the article by reminding us that nuclear proliferation and the use of nuclear weapons are the greatest dangers facing the world, saying that was why he committed us, seven years ago, to stopping the spread of such weapons and seeking a world without them.

Obama went on to praise his nuclear weapons deal with Iran, saying that it closed every single one of Iran’s paths to the bomb. (He omitted to mention those that remain open, such as the agreement’s risible inspections regime which guarantees Iranian cheating by allowing it to self-inspect some of its key nuclear sites. And the one that allows it, after fifteen years, to enrich as much uranium to weapons grade as it likes, ensuring it can produce nuclear weapons then whenever it likes.)

Unsurprisingly, neither is there anything to learn from nor anything accomplished at Obama’s summit. There’s much more to learn and dissect in the actions and pronouncements of Iran and North Korea before the summit.

On March 8 and 9, Iran launched ballistic missiles in tests of weapons that have at least the range to hit Israel. According to the Iranian FARS news agency, the missiles were painted with the slogan, “Israel must be wiped off the Earth” in Hebrew. UN Security Council resolutions are supposed to be stopping Iran from testing such missiles, but those resolutions are having the same effect they usually have, which is exactly none.

On March 30, the day before Obama’s summit, Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, “Those who say the future is in negotiations, not in missiles, are either ignorant or traitors.”