RUTHFULLY YOURS

Political pollsters and pundits who were confounded by Brexit and by Trump’s win must now face yet another challenge to conventional wisdom: the stunning victory of François Fillon in France’s conservative primaries for the 2017 presidential election. Fillon embodies all that France’s socialist, secular, and moralist elite reviles: He is a Thatcherite, a devout Catholic, and a political realist. The fact that he won the primaries by a two-third majority is but another confirmation of the gap between elitist narratives and popular feelings.

A partially secularized Catholic country with mercantilist traditions and a reverence for the state (État is always spelled with a capital “e”), France has a cultural hostility toward Anglo-Saxon capitalism. As Margaret Thatcher was rescuing the British economy in the 1980s, France elected in 1981 the socialist François Mitterrand who increased taxes, government spending, and state ownership. As Germany’s (socialist) chancellor Gerhard Schröder cut taxes and slashed unemployment benefits in 2003, France made it illegal (in 2002) to work for more than 35 hours a week. When Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president in 2007, he promised to catch-up with Germany and with Britain. Sarkozy did increase the retirement age from 62 to 65, but he turned out to be erratic and inconsistent, and the 2008 financial crisis deflated his reformist zeal.

The consequences are for all to see. Unemployment rates are 10.5% in France, 4.8% in Britain, and 4.2% in Germany. France’s GDP growth of 1.3% lies behind Britain and Germany’s 1.9%. While Germany has a budget surplus of 0.6% of GDP, France has a budget deficit of 3.3% of GDP. The French government overtaxes and overspends: government spending is 57.3% of GDP in France, 44.1% in Germany, and 43.8% in Britain.

François Fillon has been warning that France will be bankrupt and doomed if it does not get its acts together. His says he will curb public spending (he has committed to cut 500,000 government/civil service jobs), repeal the 35-hour limit on the working week, and trim a 3,000-page long labor code that discourages employment and repels foreign investors. The French left is up-in-arms against what it calls “ultra-liberalism” (whatever that means), but French voters seem to finally be willing to take their medicine and reverse their country’s decline.

Fillon’s economic platform was decried as too harsh (“ultra-liberal,” bien sûr) by his run-off contender in the conservative primaries, Alain Juppé. As for Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National, her economic ideology is hardly distinguishable from that of the far left: she reviles globalization and free-trade, wants to pull-out from the Euro, and would enroll the French state to subdue the market. François Fillon’s Thatcherite economics, therefore, makes him an outsider in France’s political landscape.

The Korean peninsula is always dangerous, but the next few months are especially so. An erratic, nuclear-armed North still covets prosperous South Korea, which is enduring a presidential impeachment crisis even as the U.S. is in a political transition. This is a moment for some supportive bipartisan U.S. diplomacy.

Prosecutors have accused a personal confidant of South Korean President Park Geun-hye of shaking down Korea’s giant chaebol conglomerates for $70 million with the help of government officials. The case could lead to much-needed reforms to curb the power of firms that behave more like feudal fiefdoms than modern corporations—an act of democratic hygiene.

But the scandal means that Ms. Park, who has taken a hard line against the North, will be preoccupied with political survival for the 15 months remaining in her term. Her approval rating is down to 4%, and hundreds of thousands are rallying each weekend in Seoul to demand her resignation. Impeachment votes may come soon, and members of her own party have said they’ll support her ouster.

The danger is that this could be a moment when the North’s regime thinks it can take advantage. Dictator Kim Jong Un is unpredictable at the best of times. But he and his military could misinterpret the noise of democratic debate and accountability in the South as a sign of weakness. Perhaps he might use the next round of U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises scheduled for February as an excuse for an attack or land grab.

The isolated North may also mistake the U.S. political transition as an opening. In glib campaign moments this year, Donald Trump suggested that South Korea and Japan ought to be able to defend themselves and U.S. forces might come home. The President-elect has since walked that back, and in a postelection phone call with Ms. Park he confirmed that the U.S. will fulfill its treaty obligations to defend the South.

A public statement from the presidential transition, perhaps in league with the Obama Administration, is in order. The U.S. also needs to convey to China that any attempt to exploit the current moment would mean the end of the regime in the North and unification to the Chinese border. Beijing needs to convey that message to its clients in Pyongyang.

Not known for mincing words, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump responded to the news of Fidel Castro’s death on Saturday by calling Cuba’s former leader “a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades,” whose legacy is one of “firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.”

He then extended a hand to the monster’s victims.

“Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty,” he said.

It was a perfect statement, both in content and in tone, sharply contrasting the public expressions of mourning — even adulation — voiced by prominent left-wing and Islamist figures around the world, including in North America.

Take Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “deeply sorrowful” reaction, for instance. Calling Castro “a larger-than-life leader” and a “legendary revolutionary and orator,” Trudeau lauded him for making “significant improvements to the education and health care of his island nation,” and said Castro’s supporters and detractors alike “recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people.”

Though the Cuban people are being forced by governmental decree to mourn their oppressor for nine days, it is doubtful that they remember “El Comandante” fondly. After all, their high literacy rates cannot make up for their abject poverty or lack of freedom to read what they choose. If anything, they envy those of their countrymen who escaped to the U.S., where they are flourishing financially and allowed to live their lives as they please.

Fidel Castro shed blood on a scale unimaginable in American terms. His butchers executed perhaps 15,000 prisoners, according to academic estimates cited by Wikipedia:

British historian Hugh Thomas, in his study Cuba or the pursuit of freedom[22] stated that “perhaps” 5,000 executions had taken place by 1970,[21] while The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators ascertained that there had been 2,113 political executions between the years of 1958–67.

Professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, Rudolph J. Rummel estimated the number of political executions at between 4,000 and 33,000 from 1958–87, with a mid range of 15,000.

That was in a country of 7 million. In per capita terms, that’s the equivalent of about 680,000 executions in the United States of America with our population of 318 million. What’s 680,000? The entire population of Denver or Seattle. Imagine taking every man, woman, and child of a major American city and murdering them. That’s the scale of Fidel Castro’s crimes.

680,000 is a bit less than the standard estimate for total military deaths in the American Civil War. Imagine standing 680,000 soldiers against a wall — all the dead of Antietam, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor Chickamauga and every other battle of the Civil War — and shooting them dead in cold blood. That’s the equivalent of Fidel Castro’s mass murder.

Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot killed more people in relative terms. After that, it’s hard to find a tyrant with a bigger body count than Fidel. To speak of him with anything but a curse is an insult to the memory of his victims.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-trump-and-muslims-1480378571

Abdulrahman al-Rashed, writing in a Nov. 10 op-ed titled “Don’t Fear Trump,” which appeared on the website of the Al Arabiya News Channel and in the London-based Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat:

When Barack Obama won the presidential elections eight years ago, it was met by a torrent of cheerful statements and writings. Back then, I wrote saying do not be over-optimistic. And now, it’s only been one day since Donald Trump won the elections and many rushed into making pessimistic judgments. To those I say, do not be over-pessimistic. . . .

Those who have been persuaded by what’s written and said during the electoral campaigns, and who concluded that Trump is against Muslims must take two important points into consideration: Trump’s personal history and the system of the American state, its constitution and judicial institutions. The president-elect has a long personal record of dealing with Muslim people and there isn’t any racial stance documented against him. He’s never been engaged in political or media campaigns against Muslims, whether American Muslims or Muslims outside the U.S., even following the phobia which spread after the September 11 terrorist attacks although Trump is a resident of the traumatized city of New York.

Meanwhile, the stance against Muslims who are affiliated with terrorism and extremism must not be viewed as a racial stance. As Muslims, this is our position too. Those who want to confuse enmity towards extremism with enmity against Islam are ideological groups that sponsor terrorist ideology and they aim to lobby to serve their political purposes.

Arab governments have plenty to do to communicate with the new administration in Washington after it’s formed. . . . At the same time, we must not blame Washington and fail to see that most of our problems and issues are the product of our decisions and acts and that most solutions to them are in our hands.

If we do not demand equal cultural access, such a cultural imbalance will result in one side absorbing the values of the other, while keeping the Islamic nation “pure” and free of any outside influence. This one-sided cultural tyranny is forcing us, the American citizen, into tolerating intolerance while never expecting anything more aligned to Western values from the Muslim world.

As soon as Muslims form a small community inside a Western nation, they immediately deny access to any kind of Biblical preaching or education inside their community, but at the same time apparently feel entitled to demand access to preach the Koran in American prisons and spread Islamic culture and values in American schools.

If Muslims finance Islamic Studies departments on American campuses and teach Islam in our public schools, the same rights must be awarded to Americans. It is true there are a few American schools in the Middle East, such as the American University in Cairo, but these schools are forbidden from having departments of Biblical Studies.

If Muslim governments and citizens have full access to build mosques in America, America must insist on having the same access in their countries. That is not the fault of Muslim countries, so much as it is the fault of Western “multiculturalism,” which expects nothing and is adhered to only by Western nations.

If such one-sided access of Islam into the West continues, while other religions in Muslim communities and countries are considered by them illegal “hate crimes,” Western culture and the values of free will and religious freedom will atrophy and die. Islamists are counting on Western inertia to win.

Similar to the often-mentioned trade imbalance, there is a large imbalance Western nations and Muslim nations that is hardly ever mentioned: the cultural imbalance.

November 9th, 2016 I was celebrating the election of Donald Trump…and the rejection of Hillary Clinton. While wading through the flood of jubilant national news I overlooked the anniversary of Kristallnacht 1938. As Arab arson ignites in Israel terrorizing civilians and wreaking despair, I think now of Kristallnacht which was the tinder that ignited a war against the Jewish people in which one of every three Jews in the world was killed……rsk
Here is a column from November 9, 2015 published in the Wall Street Journal.
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2015/11/09/from-kristallnacht-to-the-kindertransport-to-finally-america-a-group-of-berliners-said-a-stain-on-the-street-was-a-jews-blood-even-now-i-can-hear-their-laughter-by-john-h-lang/

From Kristallnacht to the Kindertransport to, Finally, America A group of Berliners said a stain on the street was a Jew’s blood. Even now I can hear their laughter.By John H. Lang

http://www.wsj.com/articles/from-kristallnacht-to-the-kindertransport-to-finally-america-1447019141

Monday, Nov. 9, marks the anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1938, when Nazi hordes ran wild throughout Berlin, as well as in other German cities. Jewish houses of worship were desecrated and then set afire. Thousands of Jews were rounded up, some beaten to death, others sent to concentration camps. Jewish-owned businesses and homes were looted.

I will never forget seeing the unimaginable horror of the night and the following day 77 years ago. By luck, my parents were not in Berlin. I was at my grandmother’s. Through the window I could see my beautiful synagogue engulfed in flames as desperate screams rose from the street below. Each knock on our apartment door brought terror, followed by incredible relief. By some miracle, two of my uncles made it to my grandmother’s seeking safety from the savagery of this night.

The next morning as I wandered through my neighborhood, I saw shards of plate glass everywhere, as every Jewish-owned shop had been looted and painted with vile Jew-hating slogans. Uniformed Nazis and their sympathizers were having fun as they surveyed their brutality. One group looked at a large stain on the street that was said to be the blood of a Jew. Even now I can hear their laughter.

At that moment, I was an 8-year-old who had suddenly turned 18. My every thought turned to survival. When my parents returned, I told my father that I would never live to see my ninth birthday. He took my hand and told me that he would always protect me and that nothing would happen to our family—because he had been a decorated front-line soldier during the 1914-18 World War.

Though reports of Kristallnacht—called the night of broken glass—were circulated world-wide, there was no forceful reaction by the world powers, although the U.S. ambassador to Berlin was recalled to Washington for consultations. In retrospect this became a rehearsal for the Holocaust to come. Although my parents already had applied to immigrate to the United States, they were informed by the U.S. Embassy in Berlin that our quota number would not be reached for several years. There was no escape.