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July 2017

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinian Authority: Minor inconvenience ‘inhuman,’ terrorism no big deal By Camie Davis

By on July 6th, 2017

Last week marked one year since 13-year-old Hallel Ariel was stabbed to death by an Arab terrorist while she slept in her bedroom. Hallel’s parents, Amichai and Rina, marked the date of their daughter’s murder by ascending the Temple Mount, along with many other Jews, including two Knesset members (who accompanied the family to the Temple Mount entrance but were prohibited by the Israeli government from entering due to the Arabs considering Jewish Knesset members on the Temple Mount as incitement.)

Besides being a beautiful memorial to Hallel, the Jewish gathering on the Temple Mount was momentous for other reasons. According to The Temple Institute, an activist group for non-Muslim rights on the Temple Mount, the Israeli police, who accompanied the Ariels and posed for pictures with them, showed great respect to the Jewish group and even allowed members of the group to pray quietly, to make blessings, and to use a microphone. This was a break from the police’s modus operandi. For the past several years, such actions, including Jews moving their lips in what appeared to be prayer, have resulted in the arrest of Jews due to Arabs considering such acts provocative.

Also, Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, who accompanied the group, was not only allowed to ascend the Temple Mount, but also to speak to the group. Rabbi Ariel was one of the paratroopers who liberated the Mount during the Six-Day War. On a previous visit to the Temple Mount, he was arrested and temporarily banned for allegedly bowing down and for saying a prayer and blessing out loud commemorating his fallen comrades.

While many consider it a positive advancement of inclusion that the Jews were allowed to congregate, pray, and speak blessings while on the Temple Mount, the Palestinian Authority did not. Because the Israeli police closed the Temple Mount to Muslims during the memorial for Hallel, the P.A. responded by stating that the closure was “an inhuman and immoral act … incompatible with human and moral values.” The P.A. also complained that the closure was in violation of international law. Never mind that the Temple Mount was closed to Jews for nine days recently during Ramadan and that Jews have limited access to the Temple Mount or have no access at all on a regular basis.

The P.A. implored the international community to “take immediate action and deterrent measures to stop the occupation regime and prevent them from continuing to commit further crimes against our people and to harm the holy sites of Islam and Christianity.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Frau Merkel on the Warpath against Trump By Alex Alexiev

By on July 6th, 2017

Next week’s G-20 meeting in Hamburg promises to be more interesting than usual. The expected unhinged leftist crowds are already much in evidence and could be counted on for a dose of violence and turmoil. More seriously, this time the fireworks are more likely to come from inside the conference rooms than outside. In preparation for the event, the German chancellor Angela Merkel has already accused Trump of “Abshottung” (door closure or foreclosure) and promised to challenge him directly on a number of issues. Whether she already feels like the leader of the free world (as many pundits are trying to convince her that she actually is), or not is unclear, but she obviously has Trump in mind when she argues that “abshottung” from “climate change, terrorism and migration” is a huge mistake, or when she promises to conduct negotiations “so that they serve the Paris Agreements.” No wonder her party’s election platform for the first time does not mention America as Germany’s key ally and friend.

If there was any surprise in this, it came earlier when the German chancellor openly sided with a blatantly pro-Russian project called Nord Stream 2 that could seriously damage the European Union. Like Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2 is a Russian diversionary pipeline designed to bypass Ukraine and Eastern Europe, damage them financially, and enhance Putin’s political clout and the dependence of Western Europe on Gazprom. This was clearly seen as a provocation by the U.S. Senate, which voted 97 to 2 to impose sanctions on any company participating in this scheme. Yet, Angela Merkel and her socialist coalition partners, whose former party boss and current Putin lackey, Gerhard Schroeder, is the president of Nord Stream 2, promptly warned the U.S. to mind its own business. In doing that, Merkel, disregarded the vigorous protests of 13 Eastern European countries and those of the European Energy Union, which clearly cannot coexist with Nord Stream 2. This is yet another disturbing case where the dominant power in the EU has disregarded the interests of its EU partners to curry favor with Putin. Perhaps, somebody should have told Mrs. Merkel that blatantly disregarding the bipartisan will of the American Senate is never a smart idea on the part of somebody who still depends on the United States for its security.

Whatever the case, President Trump needs to be prepared for a hostile reception. It will help him to know a bit more about who Frau Merkel is as a politician and what exactly she stands for. So far, he has challenged her on Germany’s huge trade surplus with the United States, which is not smart and makes him look like a petty mercantilist. The reason for that is that while Germany does have a huge trade surplus with us, it is a relatively underdeveloped country in information technology, high tech, and financial services, where the U.S. can and does run circles around it. It could easily be proven, for instance, that when digital and financial services, licensing revenues, and investment returns are emphasized, the U.S. runs a much bigger surplus than the Germans do in trade.

The fact is that while Trump may not be quite right on the German trade surplus and its causes, Merkel’s 12-year rule in Germany has, for the most part, been unsuccessful, not to say disastrous. To start with, it was under Merkel’s leadership that Germany abruptly decided to ban nuclear power on the absurd assumption that the Fukushima disaster could repeat itself in Germany, a country that has never had a tsunami or an earthquake larger than 5 on the Richter scale. This irrational decision by the chancellor to do away with a legitimate industry that produced 25% of the country’s clean and inexpensive energy, apart from its dubious legality and lack of scientific and economic rationale, led to greater dependence on Russian gas and made inevitable the ‘energy transition’ (Energiewende) to renewable energy, whose disastrous consequences are only now coming into focus. Suffice it to say that the Germans already pay three times more than Americans (twice as much as the French) for their electricity, including a surcharge that is twice the market price of a kilowatt hour.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Is YouTube Fueling Jihad? By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on July 6th, 2017

Is YouTube a training site for terrorists? Gordon Rayner, political editor for the UK Daily Telegraph has discovered that British “counter-terrorism officers secretly recorded an alleged ISIL-inspired terror cell . . . discussing how to use YouTube to plot a van and knife attack in London.”

In June 2017, Ruthie Blum at Gatestone Institute asserts that both “YouTube and Google, are effectively being accessories to murder. They are also inviting class-action lawsuits from families and individuals victimized by terrorism. They need to be held criminally liable for aiding and abetting mass murder.” And while Google announced that it would “fight terrorism online,” Blum asserts that Google and YouTube are “getting away with promoting jihad for a profit while disingenuously hiding behind the banner of free speech.”

In 2015, The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) “researched and flagged YouTube videos of support for jihadi fighters and ‘martyrs’ and ‘martyrdom,’ to test the platform’s ‘Promotes Terrorism’ flaggng feature.” As a result of the research, “by mid March 2017, major companies began halting or reducing advertising deals with YouTube owner Google because Google had allowed their brands to become intertwined with terrorist and extremist content on YouTube. These companies have, so far, included AT&T, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson, the car rental company Enterprise Holdings, and drug manufacturer GSK. According to media reports, ordinary ads have been appearing alongside user-uploaded YouTube videos promoting hatred and extremism.” Nonetheless, Steve Stalinsky, Executive Director of MEMRI explains that “You Tube’s removal of jihadi content is spotty” and inconsistent. In fact, “. . . , 69 out of 115 videos remain active, highlighting the failure of YouTube’s flagging system.”

In 2016, npr.org asserted that “Zuckerberg didn’t sign up to head a media company — . . . that has to make editorial judgments.” Thus, “[h]e and his team have made a very complex set of contradictory rules — a bias toward restricted speech for regular users, and toward free speech for ‘news’ (real or fake).”

At Foreign Policy, author Nanjala Nyabola in October 2016 maintained that “. . . there’s a dark side to [Facebook’s] Free Basics that has the potential to do more harm than good [.] The app is . . . a version of the internet that gives Facebook — and by extension the corporations and governments that partner with Facebook — total control over what its users can access.” It is important to note that “in many African countries, traditional media has been co-opted by the state [.]” Thus, Nyabola asserts that “this record of collaborating with governments should make us wary of Free Basics. The app is only worth the gamble if one believes that governments where it’s been rolled out have the best interests of their citizens at heart — a presumption that is unwarranted in much of Africa.”

In November 2016 Aaron M. Renn wrote that “[i]t’s long been known that social-media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (owned by Google) delete significant amounts of user-posted content. Some of what gets removed is in clear violation of legitimate standards governing pornography and pirated content. But a lot of what gets pulled down is neither offensive nor illegal. Rather, it is content whose message these platforms disagree with.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Needs to Confront Beijing: North Korean Missiles Fly on Chinese Technology The administration needs to ask hard questions about how North Korea was able to develop an ICBM so quickly, and why it was riding on a Chinese-built vehicle. Gordon Chang

By on July 6th, 2017

On Tuesday, North Korea launched what it called a Hwasong-14.

The missile flew only a little more than 550 miles downrange but reached an altitude of 1,740 miles. Fired on a normal trajectory, the Hwasong-14 would have traveled at least 4,100 miles.

The missile was not, as Pyongyang claimed, “capable of hitting any part of the world,” but it was an intercontinental ballistic missile and able to reach the fringes of the American homeland, all of Alaska and the approaches to the main islands of Hawaii.

The ICBM test sets up a confrontation, not just between the U.S. and North Korea but also between the U.S. and China.

In his televised New Year’s Day message this year, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un suggested his regime would soon conduct an “intercontinental ballistic rocket launch,” in other words, a missile test.

One day later, President-elect Trump tweeted this: “It won’t happen!”

It just did. And to add insult to injury, it happened on July 4.

So now that the Norks have unmistakably defied Trump, there are two things in particular to watch in the coming days. First, analysts will be seeing how the White House handles the Chinese.

The U.S. is trying to rally the international community and, as part of this effort, has called for a closed-door UN Security Council session, now scheduled for Wednesday.

If the past is any guide, China, along with junior partner Russia, will try to stall and water down measures proposed by the U.S. In the past, Chinese rearguard actions helped North Korea because Washington, although insisting it had the right to act beyond UN measures, rarely did so.

Trump, however, has made it clear that the U.S. will act alone to defend itself. And this missile test, much more than the others this year, is perceived as putting Americans at risk.

If Beijing resorts to its old playbook, it risks Trump imposing severe costs. This week, after all, follows a series of decisive actions against a China that disappointed Trump over not doing more to defang North Korea.

From Monday to Thursday, Trump hammered Beijing. On Monday, the American president welcomed the leader of China’s adversary, India, to the White House in an unmistakable signal to the Chinese. On Tuesday, the State Department dropped China to the worst ranking—Tier 3—in its annual Trafficking in Persons report. On Thursday, the Treasury Department sawed off the Bank of Dandong, a shady Chinese bank, from the global financial system and sanctioned a Chinese shipping company and two Chinese individuals. That same day, the administration notified Congress of a proposed sale of arms to Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province.

And on Sunday Trump iced the cake when a U.S. Navy destroyer, the Stethem, passed close by a Chinese-held island in the South China Sea in a “freedom of navigation” exercise that enraged Beijing.

If the Chinese do not come around fast at the Security Council, they could find themselves the target of more Trump actions. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s statement on the missile launch looks as if the administration is targeting North Korea’s enablers as much as the North itself. A renewed campaign against Beijing will signal that last week’s actions were indeed the beginning of a tougher approach toward China.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Partisan hysterics ignore the real Medicaid horrors By Betsy McCaughey

By on July 6th, 2017

Diehard ObamaCare defenders were out in force over the July 4 holiday to protest Republican repeal efforts. The protesters are falsely claiming repeal will gut Medicaid, causing frail, indigent seniors to be evicted from nursing homes. It’s sheer demagoguery.

But even these phony claims could have redeeming value if they get the public to take a closer look at nursing homes and see the filth, rampant infections and neglect — conditions routinely tolerated by our indifferent public officials.

That indifference is the real culprit, not inadequate Medicaid money. New York pays among the highest Medicaid rates in the nation — yet also tolerates some of the worst conditions. A shocking 40 percent of nursing homes in the state provide inferior care, according to federal ratings. That’s worse than 39 other states.

Nationwide, one-third of nursing-home residents suffer serious, often permanent injuries due to neglect, according to a federal inspector general report.

Incontinent patients languish in soiled diapers that lead to sores and infections; patients unable to eat and drink on their own develop severe dehydration; others suffer falls and internal injuries because of medical errors or over-medication.

The deadliest problem is infection. A staggering 380,000 nursing-home patients a year die from infections, according to federal estimates. Not all are preventable. But nursing homes are infection cauldrons. The routine precautions taken in hospitals to limit infections — such as testing patients for superbugs on admission, disinfecting rooms and equipment and keeping infected patients away from others — are ignored in nursing homes.

Patients with staph infections are rolled into communal dining rooms and seated next to other patients. Superbugs contaminate bedrails, curtains and rehab equipment. Caregivers tasked with bathing and grooming patients go from one bed to the next, without using disposable gowns and gloves, spreading bacteria from patient to patient.

Because even rudimentary infection prevention is lacking, one-quarter of patients pick up dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria, according to new research by Columbia University School of Nursing. Columbia’s Carolyn Herzig warns infection rates are increasing across the board and action is urgently needed.

Medicaid recently adopted new standards calling for more infection precautions but delayed the start date to November 2019. Why delay, when hundreds of thousands of elderly patients will die from infection in the meantime?

Don’t count on the media to cover these deaths. The Washington Post is busy claiming repeal “takes a sledgehammer to Medicaid.” The New York Times reports that “steep cuts to Medicaid” will force some seniors out of their nursing homes.

Here’s the truth: There are no “cuts.” Medicaid spending will continue to increase every year, though at a slower rate.

The real threat to seniors isn’t Medicaid funding levels. It’s that Medicaid officials tolerate substandard nursing-home care, when they could use the program’s market clout to demand better conditions. About 66 percent of long-term patients are paid for by Medicaid.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Unbreakable Polish-American Bond Four decades of rule by Communists didn’t shake our admiration. By Piotr Wilczek

By on July 6th, 2017

Mr. Wilczek is Poland’s ambassador to the U.S.

President George H.W. Bush once said: “Poland should be strong and prosperous and independent and play its proper role as a great nation in the heart of Europe.”

Poland has lived up to those words. On Thursday, as an active member of NATO and the European Union, Poland hosts President Trump on his second international trip.

This visit will demonstrate the unbreakable bonds between Poland and the U.S. and address the challenges facing our neighborhood and the broader Euro-Atlantic community.

Polish-American relations are thriving, and for good reason. Poland has been a reliable partner to the U.S. since our democratic transformation. In the Middle East we answered America’s call for action, deploying more than 40,000 Polish military personnel to Afghanistan and Iraq.

With instability just beyond our borders, we welcome the deployment of U.S. and other NATO troops to our region. Thanks to the decisions made at the 2016 Warsaw NATO Summit and bipartisan support in Congress, Poland now hosts thousands of U.S. military personnel, as together we train to be ready to meet any threat.

Poland also continues to be a security provider. We understand that solidarity is our strength. From the 2% of gross domestic product we spend on defense to our contribution of F-16s to the fight against ISIS, Poland continues to approach NATO membership and our alliance with America not as a handout but a commitment that must be honored every day.

As President Trump declared recently, we must all take our defense and security obligations seriously. No one understands this better than Poland. That’s why President Andrzej Duda announced that Poland will further increase its defense spending, to 2.2% of GDP by 2020 and 2.5% by 2030.

President Trump’s visit indicates that the new U.S. administration is taking the challenges of our region and their global ramifications seriously, and is steadfastly committed to strengthening NATO’s collective defense.

America’s renewed interest in our region is also visible in last month’s delivery of American liquefied natural gas to Poland. Central and Eastern Europe have long been dominated by an energy monopoly left over from the Cold War era. We no longer have to be victims of geopolitics. Thanks to the newly constructed LNG import terminals on the Baltic coast and a system of interconnected pipelines, LNG delivered by ship to Świnoujście, Poland, can be transported throughout our region and beyond. These terminals allow us to exert greater energy independence, and we look toward our American partners for continued LNG gas exports.

The need to reassert our region’s influence is the underpinning of the Three Seas Initiative, a forum that includes 12 countries from our neighborhood. President Duda and his Croatian counterpart, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, have invited Mr. Trump to meet with leaders from the Adriatic, Baltic and Black Sea region.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Modi and Netanyahu Begin a Beautiful Friendship The Indian premier’s visit marks a diplomatic coming of age for India and Israel. By Tunku Varadarajan

By on July 6th, 2017

When you hear the prime minister of one country tell his counterpart from another that their nations’ friendship is “a marriage made in heaven, but we are implementing it here on earth,” your first reaction is likely to be: Get this man a new speechwriter! Yet, had you been following Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Israel visit, which concludes Thursday, you’d understand that those words, spoken by Benjamin Netanyahu, were euphoric and not cloying.

Mr. Modi’s visit to Israel is the first by an Indian prime minister in the 70 years since India’s independence. The countries have had diplomatic relations for a quarter-century, but no Indian premier considered visiting Israel for fear of upsetting India’s Arab allies—and thereby, its supply of oil—as well as its sizable Muslim population, for whose political leaders Israel has always been anathema. India also turned its back on Israel as a result of its commitment to a dishonest “anticolonial” foreign policy—that of nonalignment—under which it was kosher to berate the Israelis for being colonial interlopers on Palestinian land.

In truth, India and Israel have long done clandestine business. Israel helped India with weapons in its war with Pakistan in 1965. India returned the favor in 1967 when it gave Israel spare parts for its Ouragan and Mystere fighter planes. Mossad and RAW—the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s intelligence agency—worked closely for many years before diplomatic relations began in 1992. Israel played a key role in helping India win its war with Pakistan in 1999, with its supply of Searcher-1 drones. These enabled India to detect, and destroy by air, Pakistani troops entrenched in mountain fastnesses.

India has reciprocated diplomatically, particularly since the election of Mr. Modi’s nationalist BJP government in 2014. New Delhi has abstained in recent United Nations resolutions critical of Israel, remarkable for a nation that has had a near-perfect record of anti-Israeli voting at the U.N. There is every indication, now, that these abstentions will turn into votes in Israel’s favor.

The Israelis see Mr. Modi’s BJP as an Indian version of the Likud Party, and they are not wrong. The parties and their leaders share a determination to yield nothing to Islamist terrorism. The uninhibited warmth between the two prime ministers has been on full display on Mr. Modi’s visit—as of this writing, the two men have embraced each other five times in 24 hours. A new fast-growing breed of chrysanthemum was unveiled by Israeli agronomists. Its name? The Modi.

The florid stuff aside, this visit marks a diplomatic coming of age for India and Israel: India because it has now shed the last of its dead skin of nonalignment. Remarkably, India is the only major power that can claim to have excellent relations with every country in the Middle East. CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The U.S. Specializes in Comebacks The country has been deeply divided before, but it always manages to pull itself together. Karl Rove

By on July 6th, 2017

The Continental Co ngress approved it on July 4, but it was July 6 before the Declaration of Independence was printed in a newspaper, namely the Pennsylvania Evening Post (“price two coppers”). So if our forbearers celebrated the nation’s founding over several days, I can stretch the holiday, too—marking it not at home but in Europe, among friends of America who are mystified by what is happening in the United States.

Many do not understand why the world’s most powerful man acts on childish impulses and tweets ugly messages aimed at critics. Nor can they fathom why the world’s oldest political party has twisted itself into mindless opposition—“resistance,” as it’s styled by the extremists who now call the tune for Democrats.

This picture is not reassuring for a world that counts on American leadership. Our anxiety at home is mirrored in the anxiousness of our foreign friends. Still, we’ve been here before. America has appeared broken in the past yet recovered its vigor, creativity, prosperity and leadership.

While researching for my book on the 1896 election, I was taken aback at the quarter-century dysfunctionality of Gilded Age politics. In the five presidential elections before 1896, every winner received less than 50% of the vote. In two contests, the new president took an Electoral College majority but came in second in the popular vote. In a third race, the president came in first in the Electoral College and popular vote, but only by 9,467 ballots nationwide, a 0.02% margin.

There were two years with a Republican president, House and Senate; two years with a Democratic president, House and Senate; and 20 years of divided government in which little was accomplished because the two parties not only had deeply conflicting ideas about policy but were still fighting the Civil War.

After Republicans narrowly captured the House in 1888, Democrats responded by refusing to answer roll calls, thereby denying a quorum to conduct business. This went on for months until, after another fruitless vote, Speaker Thomas Reed directed the clerk to show as present every Democrat on the floor who refused to answer the roll call. All hell broke loose as Democrats attempted to bolt, but Reed had ordered the doors barricaded. Only one member—a Texan—escaped, pummeling a sergeant-at-arms and kicking out door panels to make good his escape.

When the House later debated Reed’s action, another Texas congressman rose and asked fellow Democrats to “order me to remove this dictator” from the podium by force. The speaker ruled him out of order and moved on. The offended Democrat was so angry that during the rest of the debate he sat in front of the podium, methodically sharpening his Bowie knife on his boot heel for hours in an attempt to menace Reed.

Yet along came a new president, elected in 1896, William McKinley. He broke the gridlock, restored the country’s confidence, and ushered in an America Century. Many of us have seen this in our lifetime as Ronald Reagan restored the nation’s spirit when he reversed the decline of the 1970s.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s Putin Test The Russian will interpret concessions as a sign of weakness.

By on July 6th, 2017

Donald Trump thinks of himself as a great judge of character and master deal-maker, and that could be a dangerous combination when the President meets with Vladimir Putin for the first time Friday during the G-20 meeting in Germany. The Russian strongman respects only strength, not charm, which is what Mr. Trump will have to show if he wants to help U.S. interests abroad and his own at home.

The meeting comes amid the various probes of Russian meddling into the 2016 election, and Mr. Trump’s curious refusal to denounce it. There’s no evidence of Trump-Russia campaign collusion, nor that Russian interference influenced the result. But the Kremlin’s attempt was a deliberate affront to democracy and it has done considerable harm to Mr. Trump’s Presidency. Mr. Trump should be angry at Mr. Putin on America’s behalf, and his apparent insouciance has played into Democratic hands.

The irony is that on policy Mr. Trump has been tougher on Mr. Putin than either of his two predecessors. Over Kremlin objections, the U.S. President has endorsed Montenegro’s entry into NATO and new NATO combat deployments in Eastern Europe. He has approved military action against Russian ally Bashar Assad in Syria even after Russian threats of retaliation.

The White House was also wise to visit Poland a day before he meets Mr. Putin. In Warsaw on Thursday he can reinforce traditional American support for Polish freedom and assert his personal and public support for NATO’s Article 5 that an attack on one alliance member is an attack on all.

Perhaps most important, Mr. Trump has unleashed U.S. oil and gas production that has the potential to weaken Mr. Putin at home and in Europe. The Russian strongman needs high oil prices and wields the leverage of natural-gas supplies over Europe, and U.S. production undermines both.

Yet Mr. Putin will be looking to see if he can leverage Mr. Trump’s desire for better U.S.-Russia relations to gain unilateral concessions. One Kremlin priority is easing Western sanctions for the invasion of Ukraine and President Obama’s December 2016 sanctions for its election interference. The Russian foreign ministry is in particular demanding that the U.S. let Russia reopen compounds in Maryland and New York that Mr. Obama shut down.

Mr. Trump will be tempted to oblige because the compounds are ultimately of no great consequence, but the political symbolism of reopening them would still be damaging if the President gets nothing in return. Mr. Putin still denies any Russian election hacking, and to adapt Michael Corleone’s line to Carlo in “The Godfather Part II,” he should stop lying because it insults our intelligence. Mr. Trump should at least follow French President Emmanuel Macron’s precedent and issue a face-to-face public rebuke unless Mr. Putin apologizes.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

President Calvin Coolidge’s Address on the 150th Anniversary of U.S. Independence Day ****

By on July 5th, 2017

Thanks to my friend Andrew Bstom who unearthed this gem….rsk

Calvin Coolidge, 30th POTUS, Address at the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 5, 1926

“The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them.”

Fellow Countrymen:

We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. That coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the 4th day of July. Whatever may have been the impression created by the news which went out from this city on that summer day in 1776, there can be no doubt as to the estimate which is now placed upon it. At the end of 150 years the four corners of the earth unite in coming to Philadelphia as to a holy shrine in grateful acknowledgment of a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity, that it is still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.

Although a century and a half measured in comparison with the length of human experience is but a short time, yet measured in the life of governments and nations it ranks as a very respectable period. Certainly enough time has elapsed to demonstrate with a great deal of thoroughness the value of our institutions and their dependability as rules for the regulation of human conduct and the advancement of civilization. They have been in existence long enough to become very well-seasoned. They have met, and met successfully, the test of experience

It is not so much, then, for the purpose of undertaking to proclaim new theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound. Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. Whatever perils appear, whatever dangers threaten, the Nation remains secure in the knowledge that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an adequate defense and protection.

It is little wonder that people at home and abroad consider Independence Hall as hallowed ground and revere the Liberty Bell as a sacred relic. That pile of bricks and mortar, that mass of metal, might appear to the uninstructed as only the outgrown meeting place and the shattered bell of a former time, useless now because of more modern conveniences, but to those who know they have become consecrated by the use which men have made of them. They have long been identified with a great cause. They are the framework of a spiritual event. The world looks upon them, because of their associations of one hundred and fifty years ago, as it looks upon the Holy Land because of what took place there nineteen hundred years ago. Through use for a righteous purpose they have become sanctified.

It is not here necessary to examine in detail the causes which led to the American Revolution. In their immediate occasion they were largely economic. The colonists objected to the navigation laws which interfered with their trade, they denied the power of Parliament to impose taxes which they were obliged to pay, and they therefore resisted the royal governors and the royal forces which were sent to secure obedience to these laws. But the conviction is inescapable that a new civilization had come, a new spirit had arisen on this side of the Atlantic more advanced and more developed in its regard for the rights of the individual than that which characterized the Old World. Life in a new and open country had aspirations which could not be realized in any subordinate position. A separate establishment was ultimately inevitable. It had been decreed by the very laws of human nature. Man everywhere has an unconquerable desire to be the master of his own destiny.

We are obliged to conclude that the Declaration of Independence represented the movement of a people. It was not, of course, a movement from the top. Revolutions do not come from that direction. It was not without the support of many of the most respectable people in the Colonies, who were entitled to all the consideration that is given to breeding, education, and possessions. It had the support of another element of great significance and importance to which I shall later refer. But the preponderance of all those who occupied a position which took on the aspect of aristocracy did not approve of the Revolution and held toward it an attitude either of neutrality or open hostility. It was in no sense a rising of the oppressed and downtrodden. It brought no scum to the surface, for the reason that colonial society had developed no scum. The great body of the people were accustomed to privations, but they were free from depravity. If they had poverty, it was not of the hopeless kind that afflicts great cities, but the inspiring kind that marks the spirit of the pioneer. The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them.

The Continental Congress was not only composed of great men, but it represented a great people. While its Members did not fail to exercise a remarkable leadership, they were equally observant of their representative capacity. They were industrious in encouraging their constituents to instruct them to support independence. But until such instructions were given they were inclined to withhold action.

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