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September 2024

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Two Great Classics: Values for Our Leaders by Lawrence Kadish

By on September 23rd, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20951/two-great-classics-values-for-our-leaders

As we read the summaries below of Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons” and John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” it could help us determine our selections when we consider what values we would like for our leaders.

“A Man for All Seasons”

What is the main message in “A Man for All Seasons”? A synopsis of the play, about a king and his chancellor, highlights the importance of integrity and conscience, especially at a time when those in power discredit those values and even punish, sometimes with death, those who insist on them?

Why is the play called A Man for All Seasons?

“The title,” notes Wikipedia, “reflects playwright Bolt’s portrayal of More as the ultimate man of conscience, remaining true to his principles and religion under all circumstances and at all times.”

In the play, King Henry VIII’s Chancellor, Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), refused to agree to two of the king’s wishes: to have the pope annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon because she had not produced an heir, and for refusing to accept King Henry as Head of the Church of England. The king ordered More beheaded in 1535.

Soon after, in 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for proposing that the Earth travelled around the sun, rather than the sun around the Earth, and that we might not be alone in the universe; that there might be a multiplicity of universes. In 1633, Galileo was shown instruments of torture and threatened with them unless he recanted his view that the Earth travelled around the sun. He recanted.

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

It Is Biden and Harris Who Are Not Doing Enough to Free the Hostages by Alan M. Dershowitz

By on September 23rd, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20952/biden-harris-hamas-hostages

Why should Hamas agree to a ceasefire when its refusal is blamed on Israel by the president of the United States? In addition, when Biden blames Israel, he encourages other allies, such as Great Britain, Canada, France and Germany, to do the same.

[Biden] blamed Netanyahu alone without even mentioning Hamas. And this was after Hamas terrorists had murdered six hostages, including an American.

Although Biden did say that the Hamas killers would pay a price for the murders of the hostages, he did not say that Iran— which controls Hamas— would pay any price, including increased sanctions, or worse, unless the hostages, including the Americans, are released, unharmed, immediately.

[Biden and Harris] should warn Iran that if Hamas harms any American hostages, we will regard that as an attack on the US that warrants a military response against Iranian military targets.

Instead, Biden is demanding that Israel compromise its security by allowing Hamas to return to its terrorist tunnels under the critical Philadelphi Corridor.

Iran’s proxies are its human shields. Unless Iran itself is punished for the terrorism of its surrogates, the mullahs will have no incentive to stop, and we, the Middle East, and South America will all be less secure – especially after Iran unveils its nuclear bombs.

Biden should be placing maximum pressure on the criminals — Hamas and Iran — who continue to endanger our citizens and those of our ally. Instead, he is pressuring and blaming the victim, Israel, which has no control over the perpetrators.

When Iranians took American diplomats hostage in 1979, and then ordered its surrogates to kill hundreds of US Marines in Lebanon in 1983, it essentially declared war on our nation. Now their surrogates have kidnapped and murdered more Americans. Our responses to these acts of belligerency have been woefully insufficient. Instead, the Obama administration enriched the Iranian mullahs in exchange for a controversial nuclear deal that would have enabled Iran to have as many nuclear weapons as it liked after about a dozen years…

The message sent by this administration’s weakness and lack of will is being heard loud and clear not only by Iran but by our other enemies as well.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Levitation 101 Victory for the Democrats will depend on the perpetuation of the illusion that Kamala Harris is in any way a plausible candidate for the presidency of the United States. By Roger Kimball Roger Kimball

By on September 23rd, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/22/levitation-101/

Every honest commentator, and even some dishonest ones, acknowledges the supreme oddity of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

As has been oft remarked,  the oddity begins with the campaign’s origin.  Exactly how is it that Kamala Harris even became the candidate?  By what process was Joe Biden, the undisputed winner of the Democratic primary, ousted, eliminated and defenestrated from contention?  The rumors and stories are plentiful, but the actual facts—to say nothing of the dramatis personae behind the facts—remain obscure.

But somehow, exactly two months ago, Joe Biden raised his sleepy head in Rehoboth Beach and announced his departure from the campaign but not, pointedly, from the presidency. (Will that happen before January 20, 2025?  I wonder.)

No sooner had the public begun to get its head around that surprise than they were hit with an even bigger one: Biden’s replacement would be Vice President Kamala Harris.  How did that happen?  Who voted for her? Shhh!  Some questions are mood breakers, and it was clear from the get-go that the Harris campaign was going to have to depend heavily, some experts say nearly exclusively, on mood.

In the weeks since July 21, when Biden made his fateful announcement, there has been a lot of Dr. Johnson’s dog about the Harris campaign.  When it came to female preachers, Dr. Johnson said, we are reminded of dogs who can walk on their hind legs.  They do not do it well, but we are surprised they can do it at all.

Mindful of Harris’s, er, challenges in public speaking and responding ex tempore to questions from interviewers,  her handlers have been assiduous about keeping her out of such dangerous situations. The more she vocalizes (I almost said “talks”), the more damage she does to her candidacy. Her embarrassing performance on a ninety-minute livestream exchange with Oprah Winfrey in Detroit a few days ago underscored the problem.

Even Winfrey, a prominent anti-Trump Harris supporter, seemed taken aback by her guest’s incoherent flights of flaccid, cringe-making glossolalia. Harris supporters just winced and bit their tongues while critics pounced upon and ridiculed the seeping, leaking emission of empty saccharine vocables.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

An America First Foreign Policy By James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer

By on September 23rd, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/22/an-america-first-foreign-policy/

America First is America’s traditional foreign policy, and only President Trump offers the possibility of returning the United States to its traditional principles.

A major component of Americans’ decision-making as they go to the 2024 polls will be foreign policy. That is entirely appropriate, first, because of the importance of what happens abroad to Americans’ lives. Americans should remember Leon Trotsky’s purported observation that “you might not be interested in war, but war might be interested in you.” That is, the world is a dangerous place. There are many people who wish to destroy America. They need to be met not by attempting to hide from them or with rainbow flags, but with the force of a Mike Tyson punch to the face. Second, this election provides Americans a choice between an America First foreign policy or the disastrous alternative of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s administration. In this essay, we offer our interpretation of an America First foreign policy and what it means for Americans.

Based on the past three and a half years of performance, the Biden-Harris regime has sustained a foreign policy, largely born from the Obama administration, that ignores the existential threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), undermines our allies like the Philippines, distances itself from key partners like India and Taiwan, fuels the Russo-Ukrainian war, punishes Israel, embraces the Islamic Republic of Iran, and supports international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and international agreements like the Paris Climate Agreement that advance the PRC’s interests. All of which has undeniably damaged the sovereignty and national security of Americans. In addition, there is the joint domestic-foreign policy issue of America’s open borders. The Biden-Harris administration has imported 12 to 15 million people from around the world in almost four years, and tens of millions more will certainly enter the U.S. if Harris is elected.

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