RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/07/02/can-self-loathing-america-meet-challenge-from-self-loving-china/

As Americans prepare to celebrate 245 years of freedom with diffidence and perhaps even mixed feelings, China’s national fete this week marking the Chinese Communist Party’s 100 years of existence showed no such doubt. America faces a serious challenge from China, but seems too self-obsessed and divided to do anything about it.

It’s depressing to compare China’s celebration of a century of communism with our much more muted planned observance.

Of course, most Americans remain patriotic, despite the recent divisive turn in our politics brought on by the Democratic Party and its sharp shift toward extremism of the socialist kind.

For instance, a RealClearPolitics Opinion Research poll of 1,762 registered voters reveals America’s profound cultural and political schism: Overall, 49% of Americans consider themselves “very patriotic.” If you add those who consider themselves “somewhat” patriotic, the number jumps to 85%.

But virtually all of the patriotism resides on one side of the American political equation. Among Republicans, 68% are “very” patriotic. Democrats? Just 41%. Independents? Even lower at just 39%.

There’s a huge generational split as well. Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation remain intensely patriotic, at 68%. No other age group is even 50%. By race, the picture’s the same: White Americans are 58%, while Blacks (37%), Hispanics (36%) and Asian-Americans (28%) are lower.

A separate sounding of young people nationally by North Dakota State University produced even more alarming findings. It asked more than 1,000 students at campuses around the country if they were “proud to be an American.”

As CampusReform reported, “57% of liberal identifying students answered ‘no.’ This is in contrast to the 73% majority of conservatives who answered ‘yes’ to the same question.”

There’s a rather disturbing split between the two groups when it comes to economics:

… 61% of liberal students have a negative view of the country’s economic system. Only 9% of liberals answered in favor of capitalism, while 30% remained indifferent … 47% had a positive association with socialism, while only 13% felt negatively about it.

https://weingarten.substack.com/p/the-chinese-communist-partys-legacy?token

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is turning 100, fresh off a year in which it helped inflict catastrophic damage in blood and treasure across the world, and a week in which it smothered the muckraking, pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily—and with it, free speech in Hong Kong.

Such is the nature of the CCP. In spite of its propagandizing about raising the Chinese people’s living standards, the regime’s so-called “stability” and other purportedly favorable characteristics, such as China’s growing economic, technological and military might (all enabled by the West), that the CCP must lie, cheat, steal and silence dissent betrays its decrepit core.

The CCP, like its predecessor autocracies that covered their atrocities with utopian veneers of Marxism-Leninism, is a corrupted, murderous and evil regime.

What is its true legacy, as we mark this centenary?

I discuss it in a new piece at Newsweek, which you can read in full here.

As I conclude in part, perhaps even more important than comprehensively confronting the CCP:

as we look toward a celebration of our Founding this Independence Day—a founding rooted in values and principles that the CCP believes pose an existential threat to its totalitarian reign—is that we quit emulating it and rekindle the American way of life.

The weaponization of the state and its private ruling class auxiliaries against critics, the anti-cultural revolution under which we currently labor and the “woke”-ing of every aspect of society threaten to demoralize, divide and deconstruct our country.

Who will defend America if they believe it to be irredeemable? How will America foster the excellence and achievement upon which our civilization relies, and which this confrontation with China demands, if under Wokeism we reward everything but merit? What is to be said about an America today whose leaders wish to pursue putative wrong-thinkers with infinitely more vigor than they do the very CCP that seeks to replace us?

America must neither kowtow to Communist China nor copy it.

https://bit.ly/3jxl8ye

US policy-makers who are negotiating a return to the 2015 Iran nuclear accord (JCPOA), should be aware that the most effective predictor of Iran’s future behavior is its past behavior.  Past performance – especially in the highly traditional Middle East – is a tangible and objective basis of assessment, while future behavior is subjective, speculative and fraught with uncertainty.  

Ignoring the systematic and relentless anti-US track record of Iran’s Ayatollahs, since the 1978/79 revolution – which transformed Iran from “the American policeman of the Gulf” to a key epicenter of regional and global subversion, terrorism and wars – would be at the expense of regional and global stability, undermining vital US national security and economic interests.

However, the US Administration seems determined to conclude another accord with Iran, irrespective of Iran’s consistent track record of the fanatical anti-US education system, violation of agreements with the US and the Arab Gulf countries, and horrific violations of human rights and democracy.  Add to that, Iran’s regional and global proliferation of subversion, terrorism, wars, conventional and non-conventional military technologies, and close ties with North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan’s Taliban, Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas and additional rogue entities.

US policy-makers consider the Ayatollahs credible partners for negotiation, amenable to peaceful-coexistence and power-sharing with their Arab Gulf States, notwithstanding the aforementioned track record, as well as Iran’s fueling the civil wars in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, the persistent violent attempts by the Shiite Ayatollahs to topple every pro-US Sunni Arab regime, and the entrenchment of Iran’s drug-trafficking and terrorist cells in South and Central America.

Moreover, in order to advance negotiation with Iran, the US has waived the military and regime-change options, which is perceived by the Ayatollahs as weakness, as it would be by any rogue regime, especially in the Middle East.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/phase-two-iran-talks-go-kaput-11624314762?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

So much for “phase two” of the Iran nuclear talks. Iran’s president-elect Ebrahim Raisi won’t take office until August, but on Monday he announced his government won’t negotiate over ballistic missiles or its support for proxies destabilizing the Middle East.

The Biden Administration has promoted the phase two idea as something that would follow its desired return to the 2015 nuclear accord. “Longer and stronger” was Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s phrase. The 2015 deal ignored Iran’s ballistic missiles, which the country continues to develop. And the deal said nothing about Iran’s malign support for militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Hamas in Gaza.

Counting on a follow-on deal was always dubious. Iran wants back into the 2015 deal so the U.S. will lift President Trump’s sanctions and it can gain access to tens of billions of dollars in trade revenue and investment. Once the sanctions leverage is gone, why would Iran make any other concessions?

On Monday Mr. Raisi made that position official. He said sanctions relief is “central to our foreign policy” and called on the U.S. “to lift all oppressive sanctions against Iran.” He also ruled out meeting with President Biden and said Iran’s ballistic-missile program and regional imperialism are “non-negotiable.”