Pompeo on What Trump Wants An interview with Trump’s top diplomat on America First and ‘the need for a reset.’Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pompeo-on-what-trump-wants-1529966363

Is the Trump administration out to wreck the liberal world order? No, insisted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an interview at his office in Foggy Bottom last week: The administration’s aim is to align that world order with 21st-century realities.

Many of the economic and diplomatic structures Mr. Trump stands accused of undermining, Mr. Pompeo argues, were developed in the aftermath of World War II. Back then, he tells me, they “made sense for America.” But in the post-Cold War era, amid a resurgence of geopolitical competition, “I think President Trump has properly identified a need for a reset.”

Mr. Trump is suspicious of global institutions and alliances, many of which he believes are no longer paying dividends for the U.S. “When I watch President Trump give guidance to our team,” Mr. Pompeo says, “his question is always, ‘How does that structure impact America?’ ” The president isn’t interested in how a given rule “may have impacted America in the ’60s or the ’80s, or even the early 2000s,” but rather how it will enhance American power “in 2018 and beyond.”

Mr. Trump’s critics have charged that his “America First” strategy reflects a retreat from global leadership. “I see it fundamentally differently,” Mr. Pompeo says. He believes Mr. Trump “recognizes the importance of American leadership” but also of “American sovereignty.” That means Mr. Trump is “prepared to be disruptive” when the U.S. finds itself constrained by “arrangements that put America, and American workers, at a disadvantage.” Mr. Pompeo sees his task as trying to reform rules “that no longer are fair and equitable” while maintaining “the important historical relationships with Europe and the countries in Asia that are truly our partners.”

The U.S. relationship with Germany has come under particular strain. Mr. Pompeo cites two reasons. “It is important that they demonstrate a commitment to securing their own people,” he says, in reference to Germany’s low defense spending. “When they do so, we’re prepared to do the right thing and support them.” And then there’s trade. The Germans, he says, need to “create tariff systems and nontariff-barrier systems that are equitable, reciprocal.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Racial Gerrymanders Rebuked The Supreme Court calls foul on a voting-rights gambit in Texas.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/racial-gerrymanders-rebuked-1529968160

Liberals have weaponized the Voting Rights Act and sometimes found support from a conflicted Supreme Court. But a 5-4 majority on Monday pushed back hard against the left’s gambit in Texas to use the law to racially gerrymander legislative districts.

At issue in Abbott v. Perez were the state legislature’s 2013 Congressional and state House maps. After liberal groups sued to block the legislature’s 2011 redistricting plans, the Supreme Court ordered a lower court to redraw the maps for the 2012 election. The legislature then adopted the lower court’s maps with a few nips and tucks.

But lo, liberal plaintiffs contended the new maps were still “tainted” by bias, and a three-judge panel last summer gave the state what amounted to an ultimatum: Redo the maps or we will. Texas sought relief from the High Court, which showed sympathy to most of the state’s claims.

Writing for the majority, Samuel Alito explains that the Court has held that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act commands states to provide minorities equal opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice. But the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment also “forbids ‘racial gerrymandering,’” and prohibits “intentional ‘vote dilution.’” In other words, legislatures must consider race, but not too much.

Bois d’ébène: Slave trade replay: Nidra Poller

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/bois-debene-slave-trade-replay/

Fake news, fake metaphors, fake emotions, real human trafficking

Bois d’ébène…it’s the French expression for the slave trade — ebony-black human beings stacked like wood, loaded into the stinking hold and shipped across the seas to serve as slave labor. Today, the image is replayed before the eyes of the world. But the clearly visual reality is twisted into a Shoah narrative. The St. Louis desperately roaming the seas in search of a safe harbor. We were wrong then, we sent the Jews to their death, so we will be right now, and give refuge to these new Jews streaming out of Africa.

And the slave ship is called the Aquarius! No, it isn’t the dawning of an age of peace & love. No, it has nothing to do with six million European Jews trapped in the killing fields, all doors closed to them, including the Gates of Palestine. No, these are not refugees fleeing war in Syria. Look at them! See their black-is- beautiful cargo. In this modern age of Equal Opportunity Intl. the slave traders aren’t cruel white men. They’re dark or black….perhaps Muslim? CNN did an excellent undercover report on the way these Africans are treated by the slave traders in Libya. The women are systematically and repeatedly raped. The men are beaten and tortured. Some are sold into slavery there, others shipped to Europe and who cares what becomes of them? Families pay a fortune to send one member to Europe. But once the poor souls get to Libya, the evil dealers blackmail the families, demand more money to the tune of their victims’ screams, and credible death threats against those back home.

Left must practice what they preach Adriana Cohen

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/adriana_cohen/2018/06/left_must_practice_what_they_preach

Liberals put out yard signs that say “Hate Has No Home Here,” yet these are some of the very same phonies who are practicing hate and discrimination themselves on a regular basis.

Talk about hypocrisy.

Take the Red Hen in Lexington, Va. On Friday, Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders — an educated, professional working mom — went to the restaurant but was booted by its liberal owner for simply working for the Trump administration.

How is this type of hate and blatant discrimination any different from a pre-Civil Rights Act restaurant in rural America refusing service to black patrons? Or if a modern-day restaurant were to refuse to serve an openly gay couple?

It’s not. Discrimination is discrimination, whether that’s refusing service for one’s skin color, religion, sexual orientation, marital status or political affiliation.

It’s also an assault on the core pillars of a democracy. A political system that supports a plurality of political parties voters can choose from. One that distinguishes America from one-party dictatorships under Communist regimes.

Who’s Really to Blame at the Border? The current distress and hysteria is the fault of illegal aliens and their enablers in the courts. Heather Mac Donald

https://www.city-journal.org/html/whos-really-blame-border-15986.html

So it was a ruse. The hysteria over the separation of illegal-alien asylum-seekers from their children (or their purported children) was in large part pretextual. The real target of rage was the Trump administration’s policy of prosecuting all illegal border-crossers for the federal misdemeanor of illegal entry.

In April, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero-tolerance” policy for illegal entry. Henceforth, virtually all aliens caught entering the country illegally would be held for prosecution, rather than being released on their own recognizance for a later noncriminal deportation proceeding, to which few ever showed up. (This new enforcement policy would have come as a surprise to anyone who had fallen for the advocates’ decades-long lie that illegal entry is not a crime.) Under the new policy, even if the adult had brought a child with him across the border—the usual accoutrement of an asylum-seeker, for reasons explained below—the adult would still be prosecuted. The adult would be held in a U.S. marshal’s facility pending trial, while the child would be placed in a dormitory run by the U.S. Health and Human Services department, since children cannot be held in criminal lockups.

Images of child border-crossers, separated from their adult companion and crying or looking upset—and the experience would undoubtedly be traumatic for most young children—triggered nonstop coverage of Trump administration cruelty. MSNBC and CNN set up border encampments from which reporters and pundits pontificated on the child-separation crisis. Nazi and Holocaust analogies flew around the Internet; faculty petitions invoked the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Mexico and four other Latin American countries filed a human rights complaint against the U.S. Politicians and religious leaders lined up to denounce White House racism and anti-immigrant hatred.

Angela Crashes Jed Babbin

https://spectator.org/angela-crashes/
If she’s remembered beyond this fall’s elections, it’ll be as the anti-Charlemagne.

ince 2005, sitting atop Europe’s strongest economy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has led her nation and the European Union. Upon the advent of President Trump’s term in office, the media quickly proclaimed her the new leader of the free world.

Mrs. Merkel’s power is not just derivative of Germany’s but also of her dedication to and support for the European Union, of which many member countries grant her near total support.

In 2008, Merkel was awarded the Charlemagne Prize, given each year by the German city of Aachen, Charlemagne’s ancient capital, to the person whose actions most greatly support European unity.

Charlemagne, in the Eighth and Ninth Century, conquered most of Europe, uniting it by force. He tried to expel the Muslims from Spain in the year 778 and was defeated. He later succeeded in reaching as far as Barcelona, but could not drive the Muslims from Europe.

Merkel is now in the political fight of her life, her chancellorship in jeopardy as a result of her immigration policies and their rejection in large parts of Germany and a growing number of EU members. For all her efforts to promote unity among European Union members, her immigration policy has made her the anti-Charlemagne.

This week, Merkel faces what could be her final political crisis, brought about by German and European rebellion against her open-door immigration policy. In 2015, when she proclaimed an open door to “Syrian” (really all Middle Eastern and African) immigrants, more than a million flocked to Germany and the rest of Europe. Almost half as many came in 2016, and the flow continues.

Islamic Migratory Onslaught in the Balkans By:Srdja Trifkovic

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/islamic-migratory-onslaught-in-the-balkans/

On June 20 Serbia’s foreign minister Ivica Dacic made an interesting remark in connection with the ongoing political and territorial dispute over the status of Kosovo. We are witnessing a new reflection of the desire to create the “green transverse” in the Balkans, which is a “dangerous fantasy” motivated by ambitious Islamic extremism. “This is nothing new,” Dacic went on, “this is an aspiration which has been present for centuries.

The Green Transverse (aka “Green Corridor,” Zelena transverzala, Grüne Transversale, Dorsale verde) is a key geopolitical concept which denotes the long-term goal of Islamist activists, both in the Balkans and in the wider Muslim world, to create a geographically contiguous chain of majority-Muslim or Muslim-dominated polities that will extend from Turkey in the southeast to the northwestern-most point of Bosnia (a mere hundred miles as the crow flies from Austria’s southeastern border). Over the past quarter-century it has resulted in the strengthening of traditionally Muslim communities in the Balkans, expanding the geographic area of their demographic dominance and enhancing their Islamic character.

Political, cultural, religious and demographic trends among Muslim communities in the Balkans demonstrate that the Green Corridor is taking shape, either deliberately or spontaneously. Nevertheless, many Western academic experts and media commentators have been dismissive of any suggestion that a long-term Islamic geopolitical design exists in the Balkans, let alone that it is being deliberately and systematically pursued.

Maxine Waters: Harass Trump Admin. Staff Everywhere, Give Them ‘No Peace,’ ‘God Is on Our Side!’ By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/trending/maxine-waters-harass-trump-admin-staff-everywhere-give-them-no-peace-god-is-on-our-side/

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) urged liberal protesters to harass members of the Trump administration, calling upon the name of God to encourage liberal activists that He is on “our side.”

“Already, you have members of this cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants, who have protesters taking up at their house,” Waters declared. She praised these protesters for chanting, “No peace! No sleep!”

The congresswoman went on to attack Attorney General Jeff Sessions for quoting the Bible to defend enforcing immigration law. “While you try and quote the Bible, Jeff Sessions, and others, you really don’t know the Bible,” Waters declared.

“God is on our side!”

She then went on to specifically advocate for continually harassing Trump administration officials, particularly members of the cabinet. CONTINUE AT SITE

Social Justice Warriors By Herbert London

http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/09/social-justice-warriors-are-a-big-problem-for-theology/

In a new book that provides a powerful theological basis for something now ritualistically called “the social justice movement,” Jewish reformers among others seized on the concept of “healing the world.” Leftists in the Jewish community call it tikkun olam or “healing of the world.” Believers assert that Jews must endeavor to make the world a place better than what we now experience. As a consequence, an overwhelming number of Jews embrace this movement and the actions that result from it as biblically mandated. However, there is one problem as Jonathan Newmann in his book To Heal The World? points out, the bible says no such thing.

Tikkun Olam is an invention of the Jewish left, diluted from practice and vague sentiments of “doing good.” According to Newmann, religious history has been twisted by liberals to support a left wing agenda partly upheld with Marxist ideology: Frankfurt School post modernism, SDS fervor and Gramsci logic. It would be one thing if tikkun olam actually produced a virtuous society or adherence to a common culture despite its misrepresentation, but there isn’t any evidence to suggest that is true.

The Power of the Phrase: SPLC, ACLU, and ‘Hidden Persuaders’ By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-power-of-the-phrase-splc-aclu-and-hidden-persuaders/

As a poet and essayist, I have always been interested in the power of the phrase: the epithet, the slogan, the aphorism, the idiom, the cliché, the qualifier, the tag, the label, the title and the name. Of course, such locutions often carry neutral implications as mere designators, or may generate what Vance Packard called “hidden persuaders,” some of which can be quite clever and even impressive. For example, the FedEx logo. The company acronym contains a hidden symbol which one can glimpse with a little attention, namely, the white-space arrow implying forward motion between the concluding “E” and the lower case “x.”

The problem is, as we should all be aware, that phrases may also be used for nefarious purposes, insinuating themselves into the mind as signifiers for non-existent “realities” or as de facto claims that are wholly fraudulent. The names of many totalitarian dictatorships bear misnomers like “Democratic” or “Republic” or “Free,” which fool only the credulous and the partisan. Does an area of the Pacific Ocean belong to China because it is called the South China Sea?

But it is astonishing how many people fall for the appellative shell game, accepting without skepticism or critical thought the radiant energy of such — let’s call them — deceptors. They must mean what they say, especially by dint of incessant repetition. This, according to Goebbels, is how the “Big Lie” operates. I have conversed, much to my chagrin, with many otherwise sensible people who have swallowed the phrasal and lexical subterfuge hook, line and sinker.

In an article for PJ Media, “The Semantic Whoredom of the Left,” Sarah Hoyt unpacks such words for us — words, she explains, “that are in common use voided of their signification and filled with meanings they were never meant to have, meanings that can only be understood if you share the basic assumptions of leftist liberals.” We may regard them as semiotic false flags where connotations substitute for denotations, or as Hoyt writes, the Left is “holding perfectly good words captive and making them commit acts against their nature.” Regrettably, the gullible are routinely taken in.